


The Horn Identity (2018)

by Phritzie



Series: You Wouldn't Steal A Heart [5]
Category: Runescape (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't Try This At Home, Explicit Sexual Nonsense, Gun Violence, Minor Character Death, Multi, Survivor Guilt, Use of Drugs & Alcohol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-07 22:50:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14681103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phritzie/pseuds/Phritzie
Summary: Two forces of nature with promises to keep.A technological madman seeking truth through glory.A thief wanted by said genius and INTERPOL alike.A serial law-abider that wouldn't have been able to sleep anyway.Choose your fighter.





	1. One for the Money

**Author's Note:**

> __  
>  **PLOT INTENSIFIES**   
> 

Her luggage put to bed on its way to the plane, tagged up to hell and beyond because of her choice to pack not just one but – _gasp_ – _two_ razors, Felix hauled herself and her carry-on across the airport in search of somewhere moderately peaceful to eat the lunch she’d packed.

Settling on a stretch of seats at Terminal B, she picked at her sandwich and considered the flight ahead of her.

_I’ve got melatonin. I should take that now._

She did, saying a quick prayer and knocking on the tile floor, intent that at least a few vibrations should reach any timbers hidden below. Hope high that her superstitious appeals would be heard and no disturbing episodes of sleep paralysis would overtake where people could watch her dreadfully thrash around when it wore off, she thought about family.

Ingald would be waiting to pick Felix up when she landed. Roleplays of the rote conversation they would have on the way back to his and Marnie’s had already played themselves out in her imagination. _Don’t talk about the President. Don’t even mention politics at all._ She was more than excited to see her pamangkin. If memory served, Rina had been a whopping six years old the last time they'd had the chance to talk in person, and now she was rounding the corner on ten. _Gods, I hope they recognize me._

When she was finished with her food she pulled out her phone. Felix entertained the majority of an hour by viciously terminating Evie at Ruzzle, earbuds in and mind a persevering empty space as the bootleg tiles lit up pathways of verbiage, minor conquest, and dopamine.

She was interrupted part way through the third round of a match in its winner questionable when her phone chimed with a text.

 _Ready to join the mile-high club?_ 8:15 PM

Given the tense atmosphere that had built itself up around her dumb spelling rivalry, Felix didn’t fault herself for waiting a few minutes to respond, mouth quirking into a frown when she lost by sixty points.

_Careful… close to breaking #2._

_What’s even on offer there, an exclusive dining room? Golf cart privileges?_ 8:18 PM

She proceeded to lose another match while she awaited his response. 

_Oh... ;) so sorry_

_You raise an important question, though._

_Let’s find out._ 8:20 PM

Felix sighed and willed her smile to go away. The clicking roll of tired passengers deplaning at the other end of the terminal hall echoed throughout the huge space, underscoring the little anachronisms of keyboard touch sounds in her ears.

 _Don’t you have a stream to prepare for?_ 8:21 PM

‘Sliske is typing…’ flashed up and vanished just as quick.

 _You think I can’t handle both?_ 8:21 PM

Her sudden laugh trailed off into a sharp bout of throat clearing at the shushing she received. Suit badly rumpled, a man giving her a diamond-hard stare from where he was trying to sleep across the seats of four chairs beside her held an angry finger to his nose. Message clear: _shut the hell up._

Resigned to be stifled, she elected not to respond in favor of avoiding whatever homicidal intent lurked in that poor businessman’s eyes.

Unfortunately, Sliske was scary good at luring people, and Felix was not an exception.

He texted her a [bit.ly](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) followed by a few stomach-churning emojis and the phrase _our groove playlist_ at about half-past eight, terminal windows going a soft black as the dying sun started to be overruled by a broad and florescent glare from the airport light fixtures above.

Like the fool she was, Felix opened it.

The percussive instrumentation mercilessly followed by familiar synth had her clamoring for the Contacts icon.

When Sliske picked up he was nude from waist to shoulder and holding a paintbrush smothered halfway down the handle by tempera. If she squinted it looked like he was filming in the bathroom, a strategic decision on his part. Some of what he’d overloaded the brush with glopped off when he adjusted himself to recline against the nearby sink cabinetry.

He smiled at her, maniacal and antagonizing in his absence of guilt. Surrounded by a hurricane of construction paper, he reached over and paused the camera recording his artistic process to speak.

“You’re a particularly lovely sight this morning, has anyone told you, dearest?”

Her brain offered a few mostly benign returns.

_That’s sweet. It’s night here._

_Was there a real one?_

_You’ve already given up on gouache, wow._

But even the implication of explicit favoritism couldn’t undo the insult from being rickrolled in the year 2018. And what he’d used to bait her stung a little bit.

As did the fact that he looked cute with blue paint on his nose.

“I hate you more than I’ve ever hated anyone.”

She hung up before he could try to defend himself against an indefensible charge. Waited the boring twenty-minute crawl to boarding for the transatlantic orbital that would take her to Portsmouth in silence.

He called back once, probably to wish her a safe trip in earnest. She didn’t pick up.

Because Felix knew herself to be every bit as petty as Sliske at his most pioneeringly spiteful and the chances of him really taking her rejection personally were slim, it passed from her mind without examination. Things were fine. She was going home.

At least, that was her perception when her orbit-sailing aircraft left Washington National’s tarmac at 9:53 PM on Friday. She even slept on it, blessed by naivety and the power of artificial hormones to be delivered in comfort to her rude awakening.

In truth, Felix had much to learn about the distances people could go in their pursuit of revenge.

 

* * *

 

That afternoon, he made a stop at _Threads of Fate._

Contrary to what Azzanadra thought of him, Sliske wasn’t always best contented to thrill in deception. It was nicer in most respects to walk around in one’s own skin, at one’s own bloody height and gait.

The only real call he had for shifting was work – more of a hobby than a mainstay – or driving, and often those went hand in hand. And it was a bit of fun, to chauffer himself about wearing the face of some zealous nit. Infinitely moreso when there were no deleterious hunters with idolatry issues in active pursuit doing their inadequate best to end him.

He knocked a few times before letting himself in and turned the sign indicating business hours to the side that proclaimed ‘CLOSED' in a slanted, curly-cue font.

Frankly this visit unlike its precursors was more for Felix’s sake. He’d been flirting with the idea of a new suit for a few months, but there was a veritable wardrobe at his beck and call already, some he hadn’t even utilized on the clock yet.

Maybe he wanted to impress her a little.

Maybe he wanted her to know more.

“Soran,” Sliske called, peering around the interior. Freshly made tea was ready to greet clients on an end table bracketing a sofa with its twin, leaves steeped black and tart. A low coffee table divided the other half of the front parlor, a tidy fan of _Business Matters_ and _Umbrella_ spread across its surface.

He got his answer in the form of a few warning curses from the direction of the only fitting room he had ever entered, and so he wandered in there, passing by several mannequins bearing all manner of ambitiously bespoke frocks and other local tailoring gaffes in the process of being sternly corrected.

Why the omniroth insisted on maintaining a legitimate front for his business was only known to him. Sliske could appreciate the sentiment behind committing the bulk of one's time to pleasurable vocations. Avernic and powerfully connected, he had found natural talent in a simple trade, and he seemed to derive peace from it.

_What else do you really need?_

“I haven’t time to spare today, so don’t be overelaborate in your request.”

Soran’s disguise was not born of potions or injections. His true form required a great deal more wrangling than that, possessing no innate cell function for shifting besides.

He swiveled to regard Sliske, totaling his appearance with a single glance before returning to hunching like an elderly, well-dressed gargoyle over a laptop to finish typing up some correspondence.

When he was through, he closed the screen and swiftly pulled out a slimmer machine. Rested it atop the other. Faced him with wry expectancy.

“Don’t bother yourself.” Revealing a stamped ingot about the length of a needle and heavier by ratio than a tyre block, Sliske tapped it once against the privacy screen leaning doubled-up beside the doorway. It made a sizable dent in the grain. “I only need the usual.”

Soran’s eyes in particular never made the convincing jump to humanlike, no matter how fancy the glamour. Opaque blue gaze looking of the blind and gleaming with otherworldly intelligence, he had the general air of a man very close to expiry but also too far above the indignity of being reaped to ever truly die, which was fitting, because he wouldn’t.

Shadows followed at his back, never seen to many, and a shock of white hair fell over his rugged brow. That day, his snow owl coif matched in a smart display of taste his flawlessly secured silk tie - equidistant cross clip pitifully, loyally in place. The brown linen suit, also common to his preference. Sliske found those too dull to even consider donning. Again, it took all kinds. At least he never wore tweed.

Snatching up his offered payment, Soran indicated for him to take a seat in the armchair in the center of the fitting room. The omniroth tailor began digging through his vast sample collection, comparing labels as he went to the tiny script on his computer screen. Accrual a mystery even to he, the metallic, two-tiered briefcase rested atop an oak bureau beside the folding mirror reflecting them both in triplicate. Unchanging visual staples of his visits no matter the time of day.

Sliske was struck by a sudden thought. Raising his arm again, this time in a staying gesture, he appended his declaration. "But if you can–"

"I can do anything," Soran interrupted impatiently, never pausing in his search. "What will it be?"

Sliske pointed at him, impish. "You know I don't care for specifics. Just remember to make me terribly sexy."

The tailor sighed heavily and muttered below his breath, "when have you ever made indication of anything different." He withdrew a vial seemingly at random for assimilation. "My services are wasted on you." Displaying the printed side of the sample, he indicated the bold lettering stamped across it with a steady palm. "Puck Hornwell."

_Doesn't roll off the tongue, does it?_

"The name is of little consequence," he dismissed, perhaps too trusting. Sliske pushed up a sleeve and presented the striped forearm bared without hesitation. "I'm ready."

 

* * *

 

There wasn't much else more annoying than the realization that one had spent more time than they’d wanted to on something that should have been quick.

Errands, jigsaw puzzles, relationships. Hits.

Right then, she was specifically thinking about hits.

A roadmap of stupid mistakes and bad intel crawled over her shoulder and made its way across her chest. She’d been healing it pieces at a time, enough to stay upright, but too much expenditure and Enakhra would have found her body out of commission. There wasn’t a whole lot of security to be found laid prone, trying very quietly not to bleed herself dead on the shitty ninety’s linoleum of a squatter’s paradise in Kiev.

And so in the interest of survival she had put it off, staunching cuts and wincing away the vision-sparking ache of impact bruises. _Of course_ , she thought, opening the sticky blinds, _I’m not hiding under rocks in Ukraine anymore._

Now, Enakhra was stuck in an arguably shittier hotel, trying not to think about how she could feel the ephemeral caress of her soul’s other half come into a sharper sense of existence every time she got too close to the washroom.

 _West,_ her mind whispered,  _your love is to the west. Why do you delay. Why aren't you going to her._

She’d already drank most of that depressing reminder down to a dull hum. Although if she didn’t take the time to heal _before_ jumping the wide blanket of southern France, the half-Mahjarrat’s indignant yelling would not be held off by cheap bäsk.

Or anything, really, because in addition to getting half blown to hell, she’d managed to spend more than two weeks overtime pulling herself out of the wreckage. Enakhra was a week out from missing their monthly meet-up. A wonderful and secret indulgence that never seemed to mean as much to her as it did Enakhra; a euphoric struggle between trying to be a good friend and feeling like she'd overstepped some kind of unspoken boundary line when she actually managed to succeed.

_Moia is going to be furious if I flake out on her a third time._

It had become her mantra, taking fire from her turncoat informant and his convoy of associates. People in league with Mr. Fuckface himself.

She rubbed a clot-darkened claw over the screen of her phone, seething through a fading recollection.

_If I never see Akthanakos again, it will be too soon._

Tapping the Favorites tab, she eyed the topmost caller portrait with sick anticipation. It was time to check in with her lord. He’d want to know she was alive and, probably, whether she’d be coming home for debriefing in person. Her exit wounds were still closing up...

...and if she didn’t, Enakhra could actually make it to Moia’s on time for once.

_I’ll tell him I’m a day off, maybe._

The line rang only twice before connecting. She heard him take a preparatory breath and immediately made a face. _Oh, don’t–_

In the most outrageous imitation of a heady French drawl Enakhra had ever dialed into the misfortune of hearing, Zamorak posed his script.

“Do you ‘ave… _a lighter?”_

She sighed and dropped her head to scratch the back of it, already fighting off a headache. “I use matches.”

The accent, if possible, got worse. “Does your _mother_ … know you _smoke?”_

“Yes, but I don’t inhale,” Enakhra spat, kicking a spent bottle of Malört under the couch on her way to the balcony. The plexiglass door rolled open loud and the slam it made on closing was minorly satisfying. “I’m finally out of the Crimea, holes and all. You told me to phone.”

Zamorak chuckled over the line. In a sandy wave of posh, articulate vowels, he greeted her without jest. “Good to hear your voice. Report your location and availability, WD-40.”

Almost. Almost without.

“I’m in Arles nursing a few gunshot wounds, _sire_.” The iron wrought support of the guardrail groaned suspiciously under the weight of her arm, so she retracted it. From her coat pocket Enakhra produced a pack of Morley’s, thinking that if he wanted to accuse her of indulging out of the house, she might as well make it true. “Nothing twenty-four and a lot of sunlight won’t fix. Looks like rain out here. If you need me, I’ll suck it up now. Just know that I’ll be running the risk of a coma.”

“Surprised you haven’t come in for treatment yet,” he mused. She heard a fleeting, papery shuffle. Zamorak was already in the office, then. Considering how frequently of late he'd elected to recruit Bilrach as his personal attendant, the Tribune running him up to date on business at every hour of the day, it was safe to assume he probably hadn’t even left the night before. Maybe her lord had worked the whole week through. “How bad was it?”

Worrying the filter with a gentle, blackened thumbpad, Enakhra pushed down the urge to shrug and smoked. She outlined the building adjacent from her, a blunt and soft brown rectangle of apartments crowned by a colorful rooftop garden. Its lush urban wilds were taking up her current field of view. Row upon row of green and flowering fuzz dotted the long slope of it, a tiered eyesore in six parts. If she refocused her gaze beyond foliage, there were a few tiny people on the farthest side, possibly sharing in the reward of their communal efforts.

They had wanted to achieve goals like that once. Make a peaceful place from nil.

It'd been a very foolish aspiration.

She puffed once to keep the nail cherried. “I’m self-medicating, so my feelings are taking a break. But if the Temple hasn’t reached out to you for an apology or a statement yet,” a pause, to keep her voice from breaking in her anger despite the joke, “then they got the message.”

Zamorak was quiet for a moment. Below, thin veins of traffic wrote out the existence of a people she’d never gotten to know very well, shining metal hybrids of pride and innovation.

“That’s good.” He exhaled, a ragged baritone stream, and she heard the soft clink of a tumbler. “You did very well. I’m impressed. Was Lamistard helpful to your investigation of–“

Red enveloped her vision and flooded out the noise of cars and life around her.

“Lamistard’s _dead_ ,” Enakhra snarled, cutting him off and twisting a gnarled loop into the metal her smoking hand found on the railing. “The _fucking bastard_.”

Some floors above a window was pointedly banged shut. She did not jump or move from her place, still with fury, the solid rebound of the pane masking partially an aborted slosh of liquid. Zamorak had begun to pour a drink and paused, expecting clarification as her rationality returned.

"Sorry." She cooled her heels on another gulp of acrid chemicals. “I'm sorry sire, I didn’t–“

“It’s alright.“ Her lord sounded perfectly composed, reassuring. She knew better, knew he was only moments from property damage himself. “What happened?”

Enakhra thought for a moment about decommissioned salvos and disgusting, dated linoleum. “He was a traitor.” The smoke lingering in the air was making it easier to see. Those life-cultivating Francs on the opposite building’s rooftop were now peering over the hedges of their labor to stare at the hugely proportioned woman that'd yelled across the way from them, cloaked in an ashy cloud and bending iron like taffy in plain sight. “Turned me over on day five.”

Heavily abridged, but it would do for now. She’d forgotten herself. The _line_ was secure. A flimsy balcony in Arles was _not_. And honestly, they'd have to discuss the whole clusterfuck in person anyway. She’d almost died, and the assignment hadn’t triggered a single warning flag in their security team’s oversight. In all likelihood, she needed to ruin an intern’s day, if not their entire life.

She released her grip on the groaning metal and grimaced, rubbing her spare fingers together to dislodge flakes of black paint. If Bilrach charged her with backseat leadership again, she would cram him head first into a wastebin. 

She needed to come in. She had to go home.

And that meant she was going to miss another date with Moia.

_Fuck._

Enakhra slew the unfinished nail and flicked it over the ruined railing before turning to go back inside, mood blaring.

The clatter of keys started up, breaking his cunning silence. “Well, I know there’s a story behind that.” Her duffel was open on the single bed and she fought the urge to engage in methodical routines. She absolutely had to rest her injuries if he was deploying her, so Enakhra hung in the center of the room like a storm brewing as she waited for the other shoe to drop.

She didn't wait long. “But I’m going to have to send you out again before we have time to recap exactly how you came to find that one of my best Milites Veritas was a disloyal pig.” In rapid succession Zamorak clicked twice with a computer mouse. “Check your documents folder. There’s an attachment inside. Read it.”

Dutiful, she very gradually crashed into the sofa cushions of the tiny hotel room’s lounge and pulled up the file indicated, putting her lord on speakerphone. The image was yellowed, contrast poor. It had been taken on some kind of laminated table under a harsh light.

He answered her question before she could voice it. "Airport security picked this up six hours ago." Eyes everywhere, working for them, picking up tips and contacts. "I've been eager to reassign you to this, and I'm sure you'll enjoy why."

“R.R. Washington National to Southampton by Pease,” Enakhra recited in a quiet mutter, eyeridges low. “Economy class, nine pm boarding. Dimaanó, F. Who is this?”

Sometimes, when he wanted to sound reasonable, Zamorak fell into the tranquil but murderous blister of hoarfrost on gravestones instead. She shook slightly at his intense inflection. It prompted a mean series of cramps in her back.

“A lead."

 

 


	2. Two for the Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings here for: a death from chronic illness, a car accident, familial in-fighting, and some sexual content.

Southampton greeted her with the scent of predawn alarm calls and landscaping posh estates on the green. In the mist of the seabreeze, short fingers learned the grip on a pair of pruners all over again. Felix collected and heaped yard waste, prickerbushes and leaves, and she struggled to keep up with her sibling's stronger work ethic.

Doing it all uncomplaining for the chance to share doughnuts with 'dad', a man by far too pale and Italian to keep the ruse up long past puberty.

 _Lies can be lessons,_ Felix thought, and got into the silver 2000 Corolla.

Among the other grand perception changes that had come with her travels abroad, Felix learned that her uncle’s disgruntled complaining about an hour drive up and down the motorway was not wholly unfounded. There were tolls on the twenty-seven that hadn’t been there six years ago, and the traffic was a little bad because there’d been two lane closures.

That didn’t make it any less hilarious.

 _You know I had to make that kind of commute_ every day  _when I lived in Arlington?_

Ingald spoke more than she did. At one point, he took a hand off the wheel to point across her out of the car, passing by his partner’s brick prefab in Southsea, and that was as reckless as his driving got.

Perhaps it was mollifying to him that Felix had held on so tight and been brought to hysterical laughter at the  _DISASTER RELIEF HERE_ sign he’d had ready for her, standing alone on the outskirts of baggage claim like he was awaiting the news of a high-risk surgery.

_I thought you wouldn’t see me!_

_Impossible! You haven’t changed your hair!_

They parked on the street a ways into Eastney at 5:49 AM, dark brown doors set in stodgy white flats smaller and smaller down the road, made even softer blurs by the morning fog. Ingald told her to be careful on the stairs.

 _Marnie had a headache the night before, no one will be awake yet_ —

“DOCTOR FELIX!!!”

Her right leg took on about fifty extra pounds, and her torso was crushed to half its regular size.

Marnie waved from the kitchen doorway, mug in hand and jaw working around the very burnt toast delivered by the other. She swallowed her remedial and smirked. “You look like Hollywood threw up on you.”

Felix had on off-brand athleisure and a sad sweep of smudged eyeliner. If that was too glamorous for homecoming, then maybe America _had_ brainwashed her.

“Don’t judge my adaptions,” she said tonelessly, barely cognizant of anything but the children clinging to her like a liferaft. She stared down at Rina’s head. Buried in her stomach to the limitations of comfort, her oldest niece was valiantly trying to be mature, mouth opening and closing in a silent wobble and sporting red-rimmed eyes. “Baby—It’s okay.“

“ _You were gone forever!”_ Teofila wailed, zero compunctions in voicing her distress and too tall by far to be attaching to shins with her body flung out on the floor. “ _I missed you so much!”_

Lips thinning, Felix chided them with an unaffected, “maganda kayo, mo drama queens, dito ako, shut up.” And then she started crying too.

It was at this point that Ingald got fed up with the abundance of tears and hiccups humidifying the room and ushered them into his lounge. “Alright, alright,” he said, shooting a glare at Marnie when she could only muster an unapologetic blink. “Go on, it’s too early for this.”

Ingald’s flat retained features reminiscent of their childhood home, different now that Xenia had passed, but familiar nonetheless. The old wound clock that he never failed to set still ticked away on the mantle. Evil eye charms hung together in a loose bouquet on the Juliet balcony and the aloe vera curling toward the oven light under where the plates were kept had been clipped recently. The persistent comfort of his dowdy red bathrug gave easily underfoot, a tapestry probably older than her.

Felix stared at her drawn reflection in the tiny plastic mirror over the washroom sink and retrieved painkillers for Marnie, sliding aside the panel of Ingald's medicine cabinet.

Her own head hurt a bit. She let the red-coated tablets slide into her sister's hand, pressing a glass of water into it after she chuffed them back.

Felix had slept on the orbital. But it was a false kind of rest, assisted, and waking had been like stumbling out of a musty closet, dry-mouthed and night-blind. Hyperaware of the dozens of people breathing and waiting in the cold dark of the fuselage, tired travelers lit by the imminent flicker of runway lights as they taxied down the tarmac.

“Thank you for being here,” Felix whispered, standing for lack of the strength to sit.

Her nieces came down pretty hard after the waterworks were all said and done. Tackiness a salty film on red cheeks, kisses prescribed from a licenseless screw-up had been received with the same reverence as pallbearers.

Words four years passed the point of retraction echoed between them.

_They don't know any better! You're a stubborn asshole and a liar. But to them you're still a hero, so fucking act like one, or come home and be one!_

Marnie chased the medication with more water, set the glass down on the table, and slid a look at Ingald where he sat across from them. “They love you so much,” she replied frankly, smile wry. He was pretending not to listen, thumbing through Saturday's paper with innocent concentration. “And you know I can't keep a grudge.”

_This whole family is full of liars!_

“I do,” Felix equivocated, heart a dead weight in her throat. “I do, and I love you too, so—“

An act of self-preservation, she ignored how suddenly the breakdown arrived. The bulging croak of her pulse hammering and huge. The cruel line of Marnie's lips going softer at the seams as her own eyelids went hot and uncomfortable, still inflamed from earlier.

Her sister and uncle moved in natural unison, curling towards her without thought.

_No, this family is full of enablers, and one hopeless shitbird!_

“Thanks.” It took everything to say it. “Thank you.”

Ingald leaned back. Raised his newspaper from where it had slipped to fall across his faded corduroys. A gruff acknowledgment rattled from his chest as Marnie watched over her half-empty glass.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't anyone's fault that Felix hadn't been born with the ability to grieve like a human being.

 _No one knows everything from the start_ and _empathy is a learned skilled_ were phrases tossed around her a fair amount from an early age.

When she tried to pretend through it or make a stab at applying experience from other occasions, it went about as well as could be anticipated.

A sudden death in the family wasn't how it looked on screen. Nothing like how some authors loved to color it in their books, the ugly crying and numb confusion a phenomenon stretching out beyond the sum of a few bleak pages, if it came at all.

Perhaps to an outsider, his passing was simple enough to be split into a sequential, categorized process. The unfairness of mortality, mourning the dead, preserving his memory. Recovering with time and patience. Folks of distant relation appearing on doorsteps to console and offer careful platitudes, stories about their own losses. 

Mirza had been sick forever, but he did a decent job of hiding the how or why. At her sister's wedding. At her niece's birthdays. Before Felix could form an opinion, or think to do any investigating, she'd been told outright by Ozan that the reason he struggled with keeping his health up was terminal.

 _It's only a matter of will at this point_.

_Sad, but that's life._

_I mean, at least he seems happy about the time he has left with his kids._

Ozan. That cousin who'd so crudely explained the nature of Mirza's diagnosis to her before his wife ever had the chance was curiously absent from the service and the reception. Leela and Marnie were sure to let her know, separately and with divergent quantities of personal indignation.

Without the need for prompting, Ingald handled the arrangements. He made appointments to look at caskets. He recruited Osman in contacting souls lost to the farthest reaches of the planet to compile a comprehensive guest list. He argued over minor details with caterers. All conducted using the same abrupt, blunt sincerity that he applied to any task.

Marnie had been watching the decline take him from day one, as those in love who have fused themselves inseparable are wont, so she'd already went through the stages of acceptance by the time the nurse pried her fingers loose enough to slip his limp hand away. That night, according to Ingald, she went about transforming herself into a caricature strictly responsible for helping her daughters arrive at a similar mental attitude, and it took two years until anyone saw a glimpse of a different side again.

Leela was the picture of precocious sophistication. She wore the memory of her brother like a badge of honor, flying back to speak on the subject of stolen youth at their old school and drink nothing but hibiscus tea for countless hours with her mother, to brave the endless parade of sympathetic relatives who made it their business to visit and drag the whole process out.

Almost everyone did something to deal with it. No one could say whether their individual method was the right one. Only a couple people acted out in ways that were normally classified as unacceptable.

She got a call one night, cousins passing on news to sisters. Ozan had drank himself blind, totaled his Mazda, and then spent the entire time in A&E crying his eyes out about Mirza. Few people were surprised, but everyone could agree that it was a miracle he'd survived.

Arguably terrible.

Any flaw she could have picked out in the pattern went unsaid, though, because the real problem was with Felix, who did absolutely nothing.

Felix, who refused to lay aside time to mourn. Who would not be bluntly efficient or helpful, or observe the passage of lessons in mortality to her sister's newly fatherless children. Who couldn't sip poison tea with bereaved women in sewn-up smiles. Who had nothing to commemorate, to eulogize. Who wouldn't even know how to gladhand memorial guests and say  _thank you for being here,_ so perfectly composed on the outside but festering and withering within. Who had never settled behind the wheel as anything but blisteringly sober.

“It's too much."

"I need you to support me through this.”

During the second week after Mirza passed away from the ravages of chronic kidney failure, his sister and her girlfriend called in tears, a hollowed-out voice entreating understanding.

“We can pay for you to re-enroll next semester."

"I just—"

"Jesus Christ, please."

"I  _need you_ right now.”

Leela never needed anything.

From anyone.

That was what made it so painful to refuse her.

At the time, Felix was nineteen years old, alone in a city that she didn't know very well, and she was as desperate as she sounded.

“Leela, I am  _this close_ to failing the minimum requirements for acceptance into the practicum.”

“That will  _never_ be a problem! I can take care of everything—“

In the States, nothing had changed except the weather. Leela was temporarily overseas. Her brother-in-law was gone. No closer to being rocked by distant tragedy than the moon, their apartment felt wrong anyway. Not emptier, not stiflingly normal. Wrong. How that was possible Felix wouldn't understand until years later, standing in the shower of her studio and squinting at the instructions on the back of her body-wash.

_Pair with our revitalizing exfoliant for best results._

Just the other morning they'd been at relative peace, murmuring loving words of assurance to mutual worries. Her face smushed into Leela's pillow and said girlfriend purportedly wearing Felix's old track pullover. Covertly breathing each other in through all those impossible miles. They'd even traded a few toe-curling suggestions about what was in store, if they both behaved long enough to ride out their respective troubles, Felix in bed fighting exam week induced delirium, and Leela wandering the aisles of an offie a breath away from the wreckage, just in case, on a quest to acquire beer for Marnie.

“Actually, you can't. And you know that. Your  _family_ can. I'm not going to leave  _because I've worked for this,_  so why are you asking me to do the impossible?” Felix demanded, hands shaking so badly that she gave up on locking the door, something like twenty minutes late to an important seminar for her majors cellular course. “I've never been a quitter.”

That hadn't been the right thing to say.

Not by a long shot.

Even hiding behind the excuse of ignorance and the choking press of fears left unspoken.

Particularly because it turned out to be false. Felix was a quitter when the occasion called for it. Life eventually forced her to consider that giving up was another kind of strategy for success, abandoning a poorly calculated decision made in youth as natural as a hand leaping back from something that's burned it. 

It took them five more months of that cyclical ache, of doing what was right – and generally not by each other – for their relationship to fall apart.

Her dubious switch from medicine to law came not long after, for different reasons.

The last she'd heard of Leela, the woman was off saving the planet from foreign nationals, working for MI6 or some other equally fantastical occupation.

Marnie refused to tell her anything else.

 

* * *

 

The wharf over the esplanade was gone, removed in 2016 to make room for more beachfront property. When Felix asked whether that had impacted the fishing community Ingald ignited so fervidly into a monologue about urban planning and real estate that she had to put a hand on his arm.

There was still the rocky beach park, though, near enough to the town centre that it was as populated with families on Easter Sunday as it was with hovering seabirds, circling and circling in preparation to descend on abandoned picnics.

Meeting Aubury was a delight. Seeing her uncle's face perk up when they spotted him laying out quilted throws for their potluck was like watching the capital building switch its lawn floodlights on at night. Upon their introduction, the older man plucked a tiny sand dollar from Ingald's ear and presented it to Felix. "For an island of a girl!"

Summarily redeemed in fifteen seconds flat. The lukewarm expectations she'd founded on totally lackluster descriptions - elucidative gems such as 'rather good with the kids,' and 'a dab hand at board games' - were folded up and discarded in that moment. They were already family.

Felix gave Ingald a serious look behind his partner's retreating back.

“Propose,” she demanded. Her thumb rubbed the exoskeleton's chalk-smooth, starry surface with ominous gravity. “At the earliest convenience.”

Down the beach, Aubury picked up Teofila, grunting in exaggerated exertion, and spun her around with a wholesome shout of “ _lieveling!”_ for good measure, as though all living things in a mile radius weren't already thoroughly charmed.

“Mind your business,” Ingald hissed, visibly besotted and smiling like a madman. He pushed a cling-wrapped bowl of melting Eton mess into Felix's hands to put out on their brunch spread, sweeping at her with dismissive, gnarled fingers.

Dutiful by default, she carried it to the appointed blanket. “Does anybody in this godsforsaken clan know a good thing when they see it?”

Her sister had a wealth of sundresses; the one she wore that day had bananas on it.

“No sense for rare commodities,” Marnie agreed, cutting open packages of water crackers. “Free birthday magician for the girls until they grow wise enough to escape me, and what is he doing? Waffling.”

"You should've been an economist," Felix hummed, a note of false commiseration, and stole a wheatberry biscuit encrusted with black sesame seeds. "They thought it was salmon, then gold, and then cars. But no to all, you're right. England's most precious export is love."

 

* * *

 

On Wednesday the Portsmouth farmer's market opened for the spring. In the spirit of inconsistent rain and lost years, she got the go-ahead to scoop up her nieces after school and promptly carted them off to have fun in the sun.

There were so many dogs. Rina wanted to pet them all. They compromised on running down strangers to solicit them for access by agreeing that it was best not to interrupt their walks, allowing for an exception; the irresistible brown coats of three tiny dachshunds, pulling along a straw-haired teenager through the crafts stalls.

They were eating candy-colored macarons and resting from a literally fruitful adventure through bountiful displays, the layered produce of local vendors proudly offering their labor, when Felix's phone sang out a text alert. Pleasant in tune, Teofila echoed it beautifully, squirming over the bench of the rest area to challenge her sister in doing the same. After a concise chorus in which both hit the notes, they began arguing about who had the preloaded melody better.

Felix knew who the sender was, but that never prepared her for his messages. Or their contents.

 _Still annoyed, I presume._ 3:04 PM

A minor spell of vertigo took her as an attached picture of a meticulously decorated bed followed.

Wine-red petals had been scattered to frame a broad, uninterrupted sheet reminiscent of satin. The yellow - no, white? fabric bunched into soft peaks here or there at the edge, a gentle tug from coming unbound and catching an orange glow from below. Felix frowned. There were dots of black strewn through the roses—

A hesitant hand tapped at her hip. “Doctor Felix?”

Her gaze snapped to her oldest niece, little almond eyes large with hope. “Can we get mum flowers?”

 _Oh, you sweet baby._ She returned to squinting at Sliske's artful provision, patting around her pockets. Passing Rina her grooved billfold, Felix nodded her permission. “Of course you can. Go nuts.”

Sounds like four excited feet navigating the throng of the market tickled at her concern until she heard them not too far off, bartering in loud voices. The afternoon rays were coming down at an angle; she had to hold her phone overhead to avoid the glare, shielding her brow. Focus improved, Felix was able to see that candles dripping on the floor explained the mood lighting, and the dots were dark chocolates, because of course he had.

She rubbed a hand over her cheeks and told herself the hot flush was punishment for eschewing sunscreen.

_I don't catch your meaning._

_Having company?_ 3:05 PM

A crude thing to imply, but she was just working from available facts. Those petals would be fortunate to make it one day without puckering, let alone three. Her question was valid.

Being that he was a sick bastard, Sliske let her anticipate his answer for an unconscionably long time. _That depends on whether you would object to being collected early._ 3:16 PM

_Oh, wow. Okay. Is that an analogy for conquest or dea_

Responsibility kicked in when shrill yells and juvenile insults like 'troglodyte' and 'bumkisser' started flying through the air with the chilling precision of javelins.

Her nieces were fighting over garish carnation arrangements in front of a nonplussed florist some twenty yards out, the ruined heads of the frilled blooms halved in their balled fists, prepared to come to blows. It was drawing the attention of a small crowd.

“Hey, you imps—I wasn't serious about that last bit!” Felix shouted, already swinging off the end of the picnic table and nearly leaving their rhubarb and strawberries behind in the process. "Catarina Dimaanó, put that stake down _now!_ "

She was so caught up in defusing their conflict that Felix forgot to text him back until later that night.

Looking ruefully on what she'd already tapped out, she deleted it and sent a different message.

 _I'm allergic to roses._ 10:53 PM

And on second thought, Felix pinned it with an addendum.

 _Wait your turn._ 10:57 PM

 

* * *

 

Sliske didn't really play the dating game.

It wasn't that he lacked the skillset. Or the inclination, at times.

He  _had_  driven people away on purpose. A scant few, victims of childish triviality. But everyone came and everyone went no matter what. Sometimes they fell afoul of his less endearing qualities. Playing hard to get. Feigning oppressive vanity. They would mistake his particular brand of dawning interest for boredom's early onset, usually a product of their own insecurities and his uncooperative nature.  _Why prove them wrong with affirmations if they aren't going to believe me?_

Most left before he had the chance to balance all that out with constructive action, and he regretted one or two of those misused lovers, knowing they deserved someone in their devotion authentic.

Those he intentionally scorned... well. Strangely enough, those keenest on the sex tended to appreciate his first-class embouchure less after walking in on him demonstrating said aptitude with someone else.

Partners could become so impressively creative when they felt jilted.

His last 'steady' relationship had 'ended' by demand more than fifteen years ago, and that was what Sliske told himself when he caught his hands on autopilot, at any hour of the day, seconds from phoning a professor in Wales with exactly nothing to say.

There had been fewer maudlin errors like that lately, due one very engrossing little puzzle. He supposed his brother's stubborn habit of working through stress by trying to micromanage other’s problems was also a causal factor. In some sense, knowing his latest fixation was openly deplored worked to spur him on.

Felix wanted something from him too, though. Quite often it seemed she was willing to overlook a great deal in order to get it. If he was fortunate, she might even soldier through without asking. That he hadn't yet managed to supply her with whatever prize drew her attention was in itself alluring.

It could simply be naivety. On more than one occasion Sliske had wondered whether she was just after him to experience his ancestry firsthand.

He'd come to the conclusion that would be acceptable, bearing in mind that if she disappeared after having him that was the mystery solved then and there. For Felix, it would be nothing more than a curiosity satisfied. For Sliske, another low hit to an enduring ego. Survivable. Almost predictable.

Of course... the most rewarding consequence was if she _stayed_.

So.

Sliske didn't really play the dating game. 

But it _was_ approaching midnight on Thursday, forty-four long hours away from a rendezvous arranged weeks ago, and his thumb _was_ hovering over the call symbol.

The phone rang five times.

She picked up before it could go to voicemail. His middle took a negligible plunge at her calm greeting. “I'm starting to think you need impulse counseling.”

“Where are you, my dear?” Sliske crooned, drawing a loud line over industrially woven upholstery. “Nowhere crowded, I hope. I have a favor to ask of you.”

Too fidgety for a proper sprawl and trying to look casual even though she wouldn't see, he leaned into the faded microfiber backing of the sofa, lowering his voice to a meaningful growl. “A  _big one_.”

Wahisietel blanched and set down the bound series of intermediate Arabic companions he'd been contemplating packing with a brusque thunk. They joined about a dozen other volumes on the coffee table. Honestly, he relied on too many writing references. It would do him a great deal of good to go without the crutch for a while.

“Fucks sake!” His brother rose with a glare and spun on a hasty heel to evacuate the lounge, bedroom door a thunderclap compressed into one righteous boom. Muffled horror carried through the barrier. “I'm leaving  _tomorrow_ , if you can wait that long to desacralize my home!”

Felix warped her words. “Was that—” A disbelieving laugh was muffled by her palm or some other flesh. “You jerk, you torture him on purpose!”

A range of objects he'd place as cutlery were abandoned into something hollow and metallic. She waited all of a second before her defamation turned to scheme. “Did you only call me to make him mad?”

He offered a non-confirmational noise just to hear that handsome chuckle go honey-warm and forgiving, a welcome buzz of sensation pinning his eyes shut.

“What's on your mind? Other than the usual,” she acknowledged, ever canny. There was a scratch from her side, some flexible material being drawn across or wrapped around her phone.

“I've told you,” Sliske temporized, stretching out in anticipation. If he overdid the resulting, closed-mouth groan that accompanied his relaxed slump, then that was for her to derive meaning from and nothing else. “I need a favor. Truce?”

Felix's breathing was level and her irritation mild-mannered, altogether less intrigued than he would like. “Sure,” she muttered. “I  _am_  alone, by the way. House-sitting for my uncle. He's out doing... whatever men over the age of sixty do together.”

“A broad variety, I'm sure.” The headrush of available prospects made it hard for him to speak his desire, at least a minute or two of blind contemplation passing in the interim. _All alone in an unmolested house. Scandal waiting to happen._  

Truthfully, Sliske hadn't thought it through beforehand – not entirely certain from the outset whether Felix would entertain him with pleasantries.

There were too many things to pick just one. Launching into a stream of consciousness illustrating each individual request would likely be met with amusement or annoyance. He could invent an excuse about a legitimate problem, but she might see through that and become cross.

Pleasing thoughts broke on her small yawn. “Well? Does this favor involve telepathic communication?”

When in doubt, it was easier to fall back on the temperance of honesty. “I've been craving you terribly,” he admitted. "Wanted to know all was right, still."

A short pause, and then somewhere beyond view she removed the obstruction around her phone and inside the earlier hollowness. There was a deep clunk. Water began to drain away, the swirling loud and then gone. The line went clear, her tired inhale a crisp gust.

“Me too,” Felix whispered, jostling around. “I know I've been dodging you.”

A sigh that deserved to be soundly picked apart left her, but she continued right at its conclusion. “I keep running it through my head."

Well-worn to the dimensions of his body, the sofa creaked in familiar acceptance as Sliske swung his legs up. He pivoted to rest his neck against one low arm and cross his ankles over the other. “ _Do_  tell.”

“You know, meeting.” Wood scraped tile, distant, and he smiled fondly at the quiet embarrassment coloring her tone. “Talking in person,” Felix breathed on an exhale, listing modi. “Seeing each other without limitations like gamma, contrast, or gain.” She snorted. “The highest resolution; reality.”

That  _was_ going to be rather nice; knowing she was developing nerves over it all the nicer. “Mm,” he agreed. "So have I." Sliske let his smile tick higher, audible, and opened his eyes to the ceiling, picturing the future. “But I can't help noting your distinctions revolve around  _sight._ ” Heat mapped a restive pathway up the notches of his spine not in contact with furniture. “Any chance I'll be touching you?”

Something wet and pliant slid together in the ear pressed to his phone. That medial warmth spread like an affliction. Felix let her captured lip go and _fucking your mouth with your fingers_ replaced _describing how you'd like to be touched_ as topmost priority on the mental agenda he'd begun drafting.

“That depends,” she answered lightly.

Climbing arousal or no, Sliske offered a snort of his own at her bland reversal. “On?”

“Will you behave yourself?” It was almost more a reprimand than query. Very nearly. Not quite vitriolic, not quite flirtation. Ripe with potent suggestion. Her all around.

Eyeteeth slipped out through the grin bracketing his refusal, the only correct reply. “Never.”

“Then yeah,” Felix murmured. He couldn't be certain without a visual, but it sounded like she was smiling too. “I've consulted my Magic 8-Ball, and the outlook is good.”

 


	3. Three to Get Ready

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's some sexually degrading slurs in this chapter, mostly in line with those used in previous parts of the series. Also! I know ao3 slaps a big ole continue screen on all explicitly rated works, but please only proceed if you're at least 18 years of age. :-) Thank you, and enjoy.

_-21-61-99-_  
  
We made the correct choice in forgoing Verna II's realm for refuge. Its caustic aerospace alone would have torn us apart.

Calculations do not offer charitable projections on how our biology will fare on Verna III, but the seals on this ship are holding. Kharshai has already begun the arduous process of bringing the on-board computer back to life for accurate atmospheric readings.  
  
My vessel barely cleared the harsh-looking obstacle of a volcanic balteus. I believe it is the same topographic feature Kolton, curse him, theorized to be similar in formation to the Altius of Mah. That was far from the cause for his selection, but I admit it is unfortunate he was sacrificed. From what I saw on entry, he was correct. We could have used a mind like that right now.

There is debris covering the majority of the hull. We have been swallowed by green. There are noises in the night, foreign and chittering.

All of us are in a poor state, but figures are still trickling in from those who were scattered dramatically off course. So far, two hundred passengers arrived dead.

I am trying to be thankful that I was not among them.

 _-21-61-100-_  
  
Save for some reports from groups that landed in what appears to be desert wasteland, it is humid everywhere. Given enough time, that could pose severely adverse effects to us. The gases present in the air here are lacking in conductive properties, but there is anima in the landscape, and perhaps with time and effort, we can harness it. 

 _-21-61-101-_  
  
We have found blooded life to assimilate. That will ease part of the transition. It will still take a while, psychologically, to adapt.  
  
_-21-61-102-_  
  
Water runs clear through outcroppings of enormous flora easily cut. The soil gives in places, and runs to deep ravines with more water. We have traveled many veins to their captors, and these must be the oceans we saw when we fell.  
  
This planet is beautiful.  
  
It is also likely to possess its own dangers.  
  
Much of the time, I find complaint with how cold it is.  
  
Regardless... in a ring of dispersion stretching from sea to sea, we have fled our dying homeworld for lands that defy imagination. Vast continents largely unblemished by ash, storm, or fire are ridden by the slumbering ridges of blustery, white-capped mountains. Very few expel. The ground is still.

There are beasts, but they are either too small to pose a threat, or docile until approached.

There are also people, dreams in their configuration similar enough to our own that it has invited very existential questions among our most ethnocentric.

We are avoiding them for now.  
  
_-21-61-114-_  
  
Our ships were too damaged to make future use of, and so they will be formally decommissioned to rebuild.  
  
No one is content with this solution. Our numbers are thinned, the fission group left behind undoubtedly living through the consequence of trusting in ancestral pacts with the Chelon. Current estimations for survival are poor. More often than ever I am looked toward as a leader, and it dismays my opponents.  
  
There is less room for posturing here.  
  
We are faced with the possibility that the last ritual was our final one.  
  
_-21-61-136-_  
  
Every day fewer options remain, and so we have begun to reach out. To attempt communication.  
  
They are wary, but receptive to being handled with aggression. Anger transcends the barrier of language. Some are immediately and disturbingly worshipful, others, hostile to a fault. These nightmares do not always back down quickly enough when they realize we cannot be fatally harmed by their weapons. They die with very little provocation, and are incapable of healing their own wounds.  
  
I caution the others against taking this advantage for granted. Should tragedy befall the Mahjarrat on this planet, we will almost certainly be trapped with it. I would rather have a fickle ally than a certain enemy.  
  
_-21-61-181-_  
  
We have stumbled upon a group of middling tolerance. They rely on lunisolar phases to mark the passage of time. They name the planet Prithvi and declare the date to be 2794.  
  
Like the other dreams, our speech is pain to them, as is the symbiosis. But some of them are willing to make the sacrifice, to be spoken with, desperate to understand. Their stories of creation are very similar to ours. There is a great deal to learn yet. We are grateful for the added illumination in this, the most desolate chapter of our history.  
  
They are grateful to be proven.  
  
- _2805-2-_  
  
It is unsurprising that we have been followed here.  
  
She had a twin. Were it not for coloration they would be visually identical.  
  
I was the first to speak, and so we were the first to touch.

The transmission is ansible, bordering on psychic, and omniform.

From the moment of contact I have been able to sense him inside.

He is cold, like the dark side of a stone.

- _2805-4_ -

Through some trial and error we have discovered the connection can only be maintained between a few of us.

He is something self-assured in his allure. I have caught myself on more than one occasion indulging the impulse to agree to further contact with unconditional eagerness.

Azzanadra mocks me, saying I have grown odd here. That my aspirations are poisoned.  
  
I say it is curiosity.

- _2805-4, supplemental_ -

A partial truth.

When he is near, there is nothing else.

I tried to leave. But he followed.  
  
He followed me.  
  
- _2805-7_ -  
  
This being wants everything from us. Mahjarrat, human. If it can speak, if it can think, he can bend it to his will.

In turn, there are promises. The same kind we once relied on his kin to keep.  
  
- _2806-1_ -  
  
He is always able to find us, no matter how far away we go, no matter what I say to him. I do not understand why he favors me so, but even to beg is futile.  
  
We cannot hide.  
  
At this point, most do not want to.  
  
- _2847-9_ -  
  
We are now a part of something greater than ourselves.  
  
Temekel is concerned for the tribe. He says the Mahjarrat could fall back to the old ways, the cult ways, if we do not exercise extreme caution in our dealings with the other divines in this terrestrial pantheon. Palkeera would have agreed.  
  
But despite his perturbing methods, Zaros only seeks to teach and be known. He desires so little.  
  
I think that is admirable, and with some effort, that I could change his mind.

 

* * *

 

Puck Hornwell had ten fingers and ten toes and was definitely mixed, though it took a finely trained eye to see beyond what of him passed as strictly white European.  
  
Puck Hornwell had all of his teeth, and Sliske wagered that somewhere out there he was using the soft cushion of his lips to, directly or indirectly, do pleasant things to someone's insides. For primarily rakish reasons, but it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility either. They were diabolical.  
  
Puck Hornwell stood all of one hundred and eighty centimeters tall, looked much worse off at twenty five than he did aged up to a well-tried forty three, and he had a lean to his hips that said sleazebag.  
  
Sliske wasn't really thrilled, because he had better looking material to work with. But he'd also worked with worse. So he slipped on Mr. Hornwell like another skin, and then he gave him something nice to wear.

A glance at his nightstand told Sliske that he'd fussed over appearances for too long. 8:45 PM.  _Time to leave._

He was nearing an activity in direct contradiction to the idea that he did not date nor game.

_Call me a bohemian spirit._

At least he could be trusted to remain dependable in his inconsistency.

Dressing a body unfamiliar wasn’t any more difficult than becoming one. _Conform to the limits of its physical qualities. Stay present in reality. Somewhere beneath the devouring assembly of foreign nucleotide and radial shadow, my true form slumbers, prepared to assume control._

It was simple mental delegation. Sliske anticipated most the look on her face when he did away with his painstakingly threaded-together sartorial glamour. Preferably at the same time as the shift, and using a tasteful degree of flair. It would make the whole endeavor worth the extra concentration to maintain, anyway.

At worst Felix would get a laugh out of it. He was lagging behind schedule on the _impress beyond doubts_ front. Wahisietel insisted he had fundamental misperceptions of what constituted an impressive feat. What did his brother know about impressing sexual prospects, though? He'd rolled a druid.

_She’s hidden her disdain very well thus far, but over the last week... Hark! A shrew!_

He shut his bedroom door and gave the hole in the opposite wall a long glance before firmly deciding she would be too distracted to notice.

_Blatant if not violent disinterest in the seductively persuasive, oaken tones of Rick Astley._

From the hall nook he retrieved what pocket detritus society demanded he carry, a stand littered with objects ranging in usefulness from high to none.

_Allergic to roses, and quite possibly my humor._

Sliske spied the amethyst bottle she’d gifted him, shoved up against an oval mirror on the nook among more rubbish; partially hidden behind a handful of black river stones Wahisietel had dubbed 'keepers' when what he'd really meant was 'I'm never going to look at or touch these again.'

_Well, why not._

A little in the hands was refreshing. He worked the fragrance across his jaw, up the back of his skull, chin cutting this way and that in the mirror. Winked at himself and smiled, feeling floral.

"You've been fucked for luck lately," Puck's reflection stated happily. "So. Balance dictates this one should go your way."

He retrieved his jacket. Slung it over his shoulder and turned, voguing the look for as long as he could stand before slumping.

"Just be yourself." Sliske snorted quietly and killed the lights, keys jingling as he locked up. "Was that advice ever given with Type A's in mind, I wonder?"

There was a sweeper droid trying to get at pitiful shreds of paper pulp clinging at rungs in a grate, not even worth noticing. The next rain would easily wash them away to the sewers below. He watched it toil fruitlessly as he approached. The firmly attached waste eluded the bristles on the machine’s undercarriage no matter how many passes it gave.

Sliske set the cuboid robot on another, less futile path with a pat of an insole. It chimed in a way he chose to interpret as grateful. Faced with a new task, the machine began dispensing a powerful-smelling fluid against a mailbox. In moments the solution dissolved the thin layer of graffiti decorating its exterior, sparing the millennium red paint beneath.

 _Gentrification,_ he thought tiredly, and posted himself by the pub awning to watch for her arrival.

Dark hair and dark eyes were not so uncommon. The idea that they could miss each other put a crimp in his cheek, though, so Sliske lit up his phone and considered the lock screen – his late daughter – and swiped to open the photo album to refresh his memory. He had to scroll past a few recently saved snaps to get at a screenshot of the last selfie she’d graced Twitter with.

_ate all the fucks in the icebox. @wor1d_guardian • April 4_

_Can’t take these monsters anywhere. I'm gonna make their mum sign them up for wrestling next year. #sugar_

Half of her face was set in the foreground of a market fair’s promenade. Bright, multicolored stains clung to the creases in her lips, hair up off her neck through what looked to be sheer will alone. Felix had her arms around two children of disparate height. They were all clearly related, noses of a kind and skin the color of wet sand, though the sprogs had a curiously reddish undertone that made him suppose an off-shooting branch in the family tree. They'd posed in front of a fountain bearing a lopsided Rodin cast - La Valse. Typical.  _If you can't afford a mold-maker with talent, why not go with a subject that's already conspicuously leaning?_

Sliske swiped around, browsing, and came up short-winded, allowing himself a longing perusal of the ribald 'candid' he'd gotten from an admirer on Friday before actually finding a photo of Felix where her face was totally visible. If he recalled, the context behind that particular snap had been 'your best attempt at a Marlon Brando pout.'  _Not terrible, limitations taken into account._

Confidence renewed, he gave himself a slap on the wrist for nerd necking and straightened up.

He was on the lookout for a woman of diminutive size - essentially half of everyone that streamed by, unfortunately - with features leaning strongly toward southeast Asian. _That_ cut down the crowd by a fair amount. Reading was populous, but the local brochures didn't get to tout the same kind of deeply grooved ethnic enclaves found in London. And the hour was late, those for whom the night meant lower visibility predictably not intent on lingering, so the number of human beings wending around him on the pavement was dwindling.

At nine on the dot, Sliske clocked her from fifty yards away, though he didn't know it yet. She was just an eye-catching figure going about her lovely business, brushing a soft-looking red A-line down against the forces of the grasping spring wind.

His suspicions grew at the way she tossed her hair aside in a fitful battle to see, alighting the end of a crossing. Then the dark furl of it blew back. Palms pinned firmly over her frizzing crown, a gamine scowl and it's bare maquillage were revealed under the urban spotlights dotting the street.

Truth be told, the world grew quiet.

He shouted in greeting before it occurred to him that it wouldn’t stick.

“Felix!”

With something approaching glee he watched her transform. In two syllables, a faint slump that said 'don't look this way' lifted into action-ready posture. Gloomy agitation at what the Coriolis effect was doing to her no doubt laboriously crafted ensemble became a startled, excited glow. A whorly scrunch appeared in her chin when the corners of her mouth quirked into a discovered grin, and Sliske wanted to do all kinds of filthy things to her before the night was through.

Felix slipped around a group exiting the brickstack sandwiching their appointed meeting place with the only reasonably priced haberdashery in the city. Her hand came up to catch at her neck, hesitating at the door when her cursory look through the glass proved fruitless.

“Darling.” She spun, catching his gaze briefly and then sliding away, polite but desultory. Her intent to ignore him was surprising, the shining beam of her eagerness dimming as confusion began to take hold. Her boots had two well-loved creases at the junction of lace and toe that deepened when she peered past him obviously. _How rude. No time for a fit stranger?_

They shuffled about that way for long minutes. He tried to appear as open as possible. It wouldn't do to have her wandering off, believing herself stood up.

Felix pulled out her phone from the pocket on her jumper front, weighing the device like a divining rod. Something in him grew hot at the sight. _You can't summon me through thought alone, you sweet fool._ But the man she was looking for wasn't there. Sliske could tell the absence was maddening her. _Questioning your senses? You aren't hallucinating, not yet._

Finally, and probably because he was loitering, conveniently unoccupied, and staring at her, Felix faced him.

Taking a deep, possibly calming breath, she raised her eyebrows in a way that may have transmitted as beseeching if she were not so obviously unsettled.

“Seen any darkly composed Mahjarrat in horrible chav– uh.” Felix started and stopped, taking note of his clothing. "With a pointy ear to the ground," she improvised. "For the... latest hot trends?"

Sliske resisted the urge to smile broadly, knowing not one iota whether it would look too leering on his borrowed face. "Ever diplomatic," he commended instead, gesturing toward her in a way that definitely didn't read as brutally nervous. "Hello. It seems the pleasure is, in fact, all mine."

Her expression was… not flattering.

“Sorry?” Felix boggled, sharp at the edges and stepping backward. "Look, I'm not—"

“It's me.” And that was worse, the narrow crimp in her brow and widening of eye doing comical things to the bridge between them. Without looking away, her hands navigated her phone's screen and it lit up a profuse green. His pocket started vibrating. 

" _What_ –“ Felix aborted the call, and the buzzing quieted. " _Uh_..." She stared down at the red screen until it went dark. "...Huh."

"I didn't know you had me on speed dial. Honestly, I'm flattered." Sliske bothered with a very obvious bow. “Are you finished vetting my credentials?”

 

* * *

 

In a moment of maturity, Felix betrayed her good breeding by opening the door for him without comment, an unrecognizable and beautiful stranger.

“Thank you, darling.” Smile polite, posture traceless of ribaldry, he preceded her into the gastropub.

Felix watched him for as long as she could stomach, stunned, trying not to incite a panic over the kind of world-ending disclosures one might skip over perusing The Sun.

Just a few centimeters taller than her uncle. Narrow set. Wearing what he always wore, had she not known for a fact that his fad-obsessed closet was stocked exclusively from custom retailers. That hoodie alone would’ve been straining the seams around his shoulders, a ghastly purple herringbone too flimsy to swaddle a newborn.

A wrist feathered with light brown smoothed back errant strands of hair behind a rounded ear, skin healthfully cream and peaches instead of frosted gray.

He wryly confirmed that they hadn’t booked with the steward, nose crinkling before he pulled sleek shoulders into a shrug at their thinly concealed disapproval.

It was bizarre, recognizing his expressions on a face that she couldn’t be less excited to see.

They waited quietly amid three other parties, knees knocking on a bench that should have been too short for him, that Sliske would have complained about like he had so often the doorways and countertops in his flat.

Instead, this man crossed his legs and leaned back, head checking from side to side in a weaving bob to the alt rock pouring out of the bar. He pretended not to watch her from the corners of eyes that didn’t glow. Felix couldn’t bring herself to exhibit the same energy, stiff and growing more anxious by the second.

Laser-cut, silkscreen candleholders perched over darkly stained dividers bathed them in wavering yellow ochre. It made her skin – the same as it had ever been over her flesh and bones – look warmer brown in the low light of evening, fingers laced in her lap as she forced herself to scope out everything but her unexpected companion.

She was so uncomfortable she began to wonder whether it had been a good idea to meet at all, and that was a crazy line of thinking, because why would he have told her? What would he have said?

The man with Sliske’s voice tapped her thigh gently, and Felix turned away from desperately memorizing an old, framed A Flock of Seagulls poster in time to be pressed with a kiss.

Though she was taken very much unawares by it, the feeling wasn’t startling enough to keep her from spiraling further into a crisis of reality versus unreality.

“Don’t tempt me to make a scene when the night is so young,” he muttered. She felt the words more than she heard them, soft vibrations against her mouth. “I did this for your benefit. But if you won’t even look at me, then what was the point of getting all dolled up?”

If he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, he’d hear her under the rowdy din, so Felix spoke flatly when he pulled back. “You made me kiss a dead man.”

It could be said that she sorely lacked in tact.

More so when faced with the revelation that one of modern time’s most hotly debated conspiracy theories was fucking true.

He blinked and leaned in until they were sharing air again, and when she dared to breathe normally, the man smelled very faintly like he’d tried on Sliske’s exchange gift.

“His name is Puck,” he insisted, “and he’s quite alive, actually.”

Her skirt shifted. Felix darted a glance down to find that he had pushed his fingers under the hem, a thumb brushing in light sweeps over the red embroidery. When she looked up, someone holding their date’s hand walked passed them out into the street, and the light from their phone flashed across the man’s eyes in vivid, glittering aluminium.

_Holy shit._

“Sliske,” she said with all the bravado of a child cursing in church. He nudged closer, his pink and good-natured smile threatening to chase more uncanny intimacy. “Why the hell do you look like that?”

To his credit he did not feign surprise at her question. “Like what, Felix?”

“A dad who only yells racist limericks when the footy’s on,” she deadpanned anyway.

“Oh,” he said, recoiling with a drawn gasp. “Is that what this says to you? Married bigot with children?” Frowning down at his human body, his voice rose a hair in displeasure. “That’s not right.”

“I didn’t say anything about married. But I agree,” Felix replied briskly, touching a fingertip to the center of his forehead. Bare of sparkling stones. Lined with four narrow creases. “You’re missing bits.”

Anxiety was fighting for attention against an investigative second wind. She pictured them in focus frame. His hand on her leg and hers drifting down from his brow. Nauseatingly smitten, two waiting solely now to be seated in a crowded pub all bunched together like lovers, very familiar, whispering secrets. The potential embarrassment she might’ve felt at that was dwarfed by her dawning curiosity.

 _Skinchangers. Shapeshifters._ The Mahjarrat carried a burden of mysteries, many of them uncharitable, some bordering on vilifying. With nothing but a wink and a nudge, assuming she hadn’t finally lost it, he’d decided to blow one of the later wide open. Strange as the concept itself was the question of what had prompted that.

 _Your benefit_ echoed around the cavern of her mind. _His name is Puck._

_Are you really in there somewhere?_

‘Puck’ raised a thinly groomed eyebrow and snorted. “Not at all, dearest. Just hiding them.” He grabbed her suddenly, a quick cuff around her wrist, and made to have her touch him there again. “Try now—”

“I’ve a table open, if you’re ready to be seated.”

And… there it was. Mortification scalded her. Felix recoiled abruptly, the dull fingers branding an impression into her thigh a cue to stand half a beat afterward. His touch fell away and she unconsciously moved to scrub it's ghostly tickle out, dismayed. “Yeah, please. Thanks.”

She tried not to think too hard about aliens wearing people, but as one happened to be following at her back, that proved to be pretty hard. They were led into the smoking section, the steward perceptibly not overjoyed that lovesick idiots would be engaging in clichéd displays of public affection for the rest of their tables to enjoy. Canned, crowd-tested bar music faded into impressions of bass and vocals. Shown to an out-of-the-way booth, they were offered the opportunity to order drinks, which Felix declined.

While ‘Puck’ poured in disturbing caricature of scrutiny over the cocktail list, she tried to plan a discreet escape and hid behind an elaborate menu of starters and salads.

 _No one sane would follow if I excused myself because of a medical emergency._ She’d never been able to fake illness in school, though, a lifelong side effect of emotionally elastic features.

 _I could go to the bathroom and then slip away with a group, maybe_. That was slightly more feasible. _Check myself into the nearest surgery for mental evaluation afterward._

A trainer nudged one of her shoes and her attention snapped forward as the toe of it trailed up to tease at her knee. ‘Puck’ leered across the way, no longer feigning interest in highballs or mojitos.

“Uh,” Felix stammered shrewdly. “I’m not feeling this.”

He allowed the slender menu in his downy grasp to tip forward until it curved, head tilted in amusement. They could’ve shared a booth – he hardly filled out half of his side.

“Because you’re so often sorely lacking in adventurous spirit, I have chosen to take your lack of enthusiasm in stride as correctable,” he remarked, venturing higher and trading the nylon rub of the trainer for a sockless ankle. “But if you really want me for my body, not that anyone could blame you–“

 _I don’t_. She strained to correct him, chest tight and thoughts whirling _. I don’t know you. I don’t know who this guy you are is at all_.

‘Puck’ spoke first. “Then I’ll squander nothing more of our time together.” He wet plush lips and smiled diabolically. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Legs still long enough that she had to scoot around to avoid engaging in something by rules of probability illegal, he goaded her with eyes judgmentally thin, buck brown in frames of shining white. “Or are you trying to call the match completely?”

Gripping tablecloth in her trembling hands, Felix tipped most of her upper body forward to evade his attempts at playing with her. “I’m trying to tell you that this is _super weird._ ” The furious hiss was loud enough to draw looks from their neighbors. “I’m trying to say that I wanted to meet–“ she floundered, in sotto voce decaying. “Not whoever the _hell_ Puck is!"

Their waiter arrived at that very moment, looking exhausted though not overall deterred by the disagreement in development, but before the poor man could get a word in edgewise her baffling companion stood.

It happened fast. She wouldn’t have been sure she’d even seen it, were his theatrics less known to her than his… hirsute costume.

He _winked_ at her.

Pulled out a tight cigar of what looked to be pound notes of large denomination from his chino pocket.

And secreted a few of them in the gentleman’s apron, perilously invading his personal space.

When he spoke, he sounded every bit a disgruntled father late for his favorite broadcast.

“My wife is being an utter cow tonight. Please enjoy whatever tawdry advances she’s likely to make towards you, and if you’ll do me the favor, at least fend her off until I can find a cab to take me far, far away from the travesty of our union.”

With that said, ‘Puck’ strode fuming back toward the forefront of the gastropub, darting around servers and guests in dramatically torrid flight from a bad evening.

The waiter was confused by her choice to wave away his righteous concern for her well-being. Felix concealed stunned embarrassment and worse, rib aching laughter, behind a phrase about moods.

“No, it’s fine, it’s… this happens all the time,” she excused, pulling her left hand behind her back to disguise the absence of a ring. “Really. Sorry for troubling you.”

Felix waited very little before leaving, phone close at hand and wondering how she’d really gotten herself into such a confusion of personality and message.

_I’m in shock, maybe._

She spent ten minutes tooling by the curb outside. Growing suspicion forced her out of it.

_For a man leagues away from the description of conspicuously wealthy, that bribing maneuver looked very practiced._

Deliberating whether Marnie would be sympathetic if she cashed out, Felix wandered from beneath the business awning of the place they’d nearly spent untold moments pretending to be at ease as he groped her under the table.

_I should be googling infirmaries. I should be calling my sister. I shouldn’t have done this shit._

It had grown a little colder in the hour or so passed her arrival, but the night was still dry, even under the crisp threat of rain from rolling smog overhead. A few more people entered the pub, chattering about the Tories. Saturday night in Reading was winding down in preparation to pick up.

Felix rocked forward on her shoes to peer over some cars passing in the lane. Perhaps the man that sounded like Sliske _had_ hailed a cab off to Guthix knew where to escape her. But he’d been the one turning the world on its head.

Frustrated, she started the long walk to the station that would take her back to Portsmouth, palming her phone back and forth.

Not a couple yards from the next brownstone, someone clapped a hand over her mouth. They dragged her away like that, trapping her arms at her sides with a tough and unyielding band.

Before she could think of screaming she was swallowed by a dark alleyway, their huge palm stifling her breathing’s volume. Eyes wide, the sky was blotted out by blackness only to become a wall of pitted bricks, burnt red lined with white scratches.

As quick as she'd been taken, Felix was released. The hand left her face, and it was replaced by the sharp scent of garbage.

She found herself crowded between a tall walkway intersected fully with large and impassable bars on her right, the metal streaked by a long and terrifying shadow. On the street side, a cement windbreaker cutting into the alley guarded the doorway to the back of the pub. Felix and her attacker weren’t visible at all.

Her only hope was that somebody started craving a smoke. _Right about now would be good._

Felix turned hard, heart throbbing a sick reminder of mortality in her stomach.

She was faced with an abdomen. Black raglan artfully baggy, the shirt should have barely reached the top of orange twill, chinos well clear of the statement ‘high-watered.’ They still trailed a smidge too low over the backs of his streak-of-lightning trainers, a walk or two away from going rough at the hem.

Voice promising of casual barbs, he scolded her overhead. “I would have thought you’d be more patient than that. You’ve been holding out on me, naughty thing. I feel virtually outstripped in gusto.”

Felix looked up.

And up.

And up.

Sliske true in face and form as he ever had been on a computer screen beamed down at her.

Above, his hands formed an arch with arms comfortably swathed in his delicate jacket, filling up her field of view with chest and shoulders proportionally outlandish.

She twisted his words over and over in her mind.

Stashed her phone. Tried to breathe.

He posed a question rich in mock irritation, grin going wry under the shady cast of the hood he’d drawn up to conceal himself. “Happy now?”

Relief in every form crashed over her with devastating clarity.

Felix met him unspeaking, cursing herself internally for wearing a skirt. It rode up well beyond the point of indecency when Sliske knelt to assist, wrapping them together and crushing her against the building’s abrasive russet facade.

They shoved into each other that way until it seemed there was no space left for anything, his head angled down and her neck craning up even with the height afforded her by their embrace.

“I can’t believe it,” Felix gasped, biting back a pained moan when he withdrew to grind her into the wall by phases with hard, insistent rocking. “I cannot believe you’re a—some kind of _cryptid_. Or that _fucking_ dense, shit—”

Fingertips found what the Mahjarrat seldom liked to use under the crisscross patterned cloth of his hood, a warm pocket, catching on ribbons of bone traveling to the tapered peak, and he mirrored her exploration. Pads bearing flinty points shifted hair back to rub the shell of her ear and dip thumbs into the hollows of her throat.

“Can’t you?” Sliske asked, sarcastic bordering on frantic, mouth slackening as they discovered one another. Felix found and sucked firmly over the place where his pulse lay, skipping fast under her tongue. He blew out a breath against the bricks; she felt its passage through his chest. “Was it really so poor an introduction?”

She replied with canines and he trembled, trickling coarse language interspersed with stumbling, winded praise. “ _Fuck_ , you are so bloody obscene, Felix—“

Her laugh rushed out through her nose, provocation weighing her eyes shut. He kept inhaling, like there was some secret formula to suss out in the top notes of her conditioner. Felix released and then kissed the spot where she’d abused him, willing it to bruise.

“ _I’m_ obscene?” She leaned in as far as physics permitted to consume him between words. “You really thought,” her nose brushed his, angling for depth, “that was so damn smooth, didn’t you?” He made a noise hot with fervor in agreement. “And _poor? What_ an understatement.” One final, stern kiss and she drew back to level him an honest glower. “I almost decked you.”

She hadn’t, but it was the thought that counted.

He shivered against her and that was surprisingly pleasant, a reminder they were one layer of denim and an immaterial cotton barrier away from getting biblical against the delivery back-in of a very busy establishment’s kitchens.

“They say the first impression never dies,” Sliske mused in a bitter jest, slotting his curved chin up against hers to breathe for a minute. “And I wanted you on sight.”

She swallowed. “Well, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Puck.” Her tone fell flat, glare only partially for show then because of how deliriously deprived Felix felt, slowing to meet the reality of their situation. A car honking in the distance startled them both; it was beyond time to be leaving for someplace private. She quirked an eyebrow. “But if you’re done accusing me of making passes at waitstaff, I think we should go.”

Sharp and bright, his upper teeth raked over his bottom lip.

“Don’t suppose,” Sliske began, and the night went dimmer around the black voids yawning over her. “That I could talk you into a quick sojourn with me.”

Felix stared.

He'd kohled his eyes, which... _Guthix, you are truly a spectacle_. It made the honeycomb pattern of each compound iris at least twice as vivid, bordering on hypnotic. She wondered if he was paying the same treatment to her pupils, and if he was, whether they were giving the game away for her, moonless and blown.

Absurd hands squeezed around where they effortlessly bridged the gap between hip and thigh, expressing promises. “Just a taste.”

It was tempting.

She could picture it, in her head, how easy it would be. _A zipper to pull, maybe some claw utilization._

They had discussed it often enough. He was probably remembering the way she’d encouraged the concept only days prior, arching and gasping for him in stereo.

If anyone found them, there would be hell to pay.

Higher authorities involved. Scholarships lost. Maybe citizenship status placed in jeopardy, if the circus went all the way up.

“Not your best idea,” Felix declined. Mindful, she loosened her grip on him to slide down until one shoe could toe pavement, and then the other.

Sliske tensed and then released a gusty sigh. “Give me a minute. I’ll come up with a better one.” Stubborn as ever, he kept her close, drinking in with famished eyes the way she righted her skirt. When she tapped his chest to be let out, he bent to steal another filthy kiss.

Unsurprisingly, that ended with her head guarded in a palm against the wall. She whimpered when he started to paw her fuzzy jumper aside to seek the skin of her abdomen, his brazen moan unsatisfied. “You must be so _marvelously_ constricting—“

 _Oh Gods_. Felix choked through a laugh, stressed. _We have to get out of here or I’m going to become a criminal._

“Sliske.” Saying his name was a mistake – he took it as encouragement, groaning down her throat. “No, I’m really— _seriously_ , stop.” She gave him a woozy jerk in response to the aggravated scratch of keen nails over an already overstimulated ribcage. “I don’t want to be arrested.”

He tore himself away panting. “Yes, fine.” She still had to dig his hand out from under her top. “Right as always and no fun at all.”

In an effort to compose herself, Felix swiped blindly at her shoulders to loosen any grit left by the bricks. He failed to be as discrete in his grooming, but they had lucked out for long enough to dodge discovery, surrounded by broken down cardboard and that concrete wall.

Flipping his erection up into his waistband, eyeridges lowered in exasperated humor, Sliske muttered a low revision. “For future reference… we wouldn't be caught. Not unless I felt like it.”

There was a _lot_ to contest in that statement. _We certainly_ would _. I wouldn’t be able to—to keep—_

Perhaps she’d be mistaken for innocent. Her hair could pass for wind-tousled at a distance. _Took a little tumble, fell into a ditch._ The screaming combination of his vibrant clothing and alien complexion was going to draw stares, though, subtle adjustments equaling up to nothing if he was sex-mussed and radiant with—

_No, no, no._

When they less resembled people who had been about to fuck across from a dumpster, Felix pulled out and lit up her phone.

And winced.

_Five till eleven already._

Curfew she had not, but… it was growing late. Unplanned, it looked more and more like wherever they went to finish this would be where she’d stay until daybreak. _Unless I want to crawl back to Ingald’s well after midnight._ Another reason to move this along.

Her sister might be thrilled for her if she sent a defeated text tomorrow, but there was an equally good chance of her uncle superseding their childish back-and-forth victories to fuss if she was still MIA come morning.

 _Form search parties with the neighborhood association. Fly dashboards with hand-drawn missing persons posters. Harass nearby surgeries for their inpatient totals_. He was just like that, a consummate neurotic. Unfortunately, Felix had always been far better at bugging the man than pacifying him.

But chaotic as the evening had become, she wasn’t about to contemplate turning Sliske down behind closed doors. The Mahjarrat had an explanation to provide, for one, a lengthy and hopefully historied account of exactly how and why he’d come to dinner wearing a man who might be upset to learn Felix now knew well enough what his mouth felt like, _if_ he was flourishing somewhere.

“I’ve got doubts,” Felix muttered, holding down the power button and slipping her phone into her jumper’s pocket. “We need to talk about where you bought those clothes, by the way.”

Sliske crowded her against his side. “I know a shortcut from here to mine,” came his appeal in her ear, and she rewarded him with a sharp, emphatic pinch at the waist. “Ow, you bitch. Be reasonable, I’m going to faint.”

He chuckled at her skeptical snort, hellacious form overshadowing hers as they emerged under incandescent blue streetlights to make left down the lane.

They ignored a traffic red to hop a crosswalk, streets falling barren in the pause between neighborhoods going to sleep and clubs coming alive.

When Sliske started to climb a short fence about halfway down another gap between buildings, Felix was transported for the second time that week to a different period in her life. _Fucking damn it._

She squared her shoulders. Conscience completely opposed to the absurdity of him, her heart was long resigned to how swept up in his game she’d become anyway. _I’m doing this. This is a thing I am doing right now_.

He cast a grin back at her and heaved himself past the obstacle without difficulty, landing like a cat. “But showing some restraint, more of _that_ kind of proactivity, and I’ll tell you _anything_ you want to know.”

 

* * *

 

On a high-rise about a mile off, a pair of binoculars lost their target.

Their owner cursed and hefted a burdensome duffel in preparation to move again.

 

* * *

 

Coffee came in bags on Earth, and so logic would follow that it came bagged up in space.

Still, there was no satisfying build to the hiss and rumble of water nearing vapor state, no heady and lingering scent of dark comfort.

She tapped a beat out on the side of the breakfast console as hot beverage was vacuumed into the thermos attached to it.

 _Astronauts are geniuses_ , she recalled ruefully, removing the holder from its clasp with a soft jerk. _You’ll never be able to pass up there, in such cramped and intimate quarters._

People thought themselves pretty clever no matter their race. In her opinion, all humans possessed laughable attention spans. Ten thousand hours looking into the sky or into a book and Dr. Loren had assumed he could pick her apart like the diagnostic manual in her other hand helped to suss out glitches in subroutines. Generally, his guesses ranged from insulting to pitiful.

Remote sections lit up and dimmed as she passed. Her pointer finger found the deadlock on the valve release to the door for Soyuz III and triggered a closure for section A2.

She drifted down into the capsulized chamber calmly, comms system live at her hip and picking up the chatter from her crewmates. Russian, English, and Japanese filtered across the stream. Though the channels could be separated and officially, always were, she liked to be appraised of all situations, all the time.

A thermos of coffee every morning was a staple of her forgery. _Need my coffee_ , she’d joke in dry commiseration, and the nods followed.

It helped that her suit was very healthy looking. Plump in the arms and thighs over an envy-inspiring cascade of muscle that flowed from shoulder to shin. _You work out, huh? – Yeah, something like that._

But workplace harassment aside, Trindine was more than good at blending in. She'd mastered it.

Astronauts were saddled with chores, not busywork. The functions they performed on-station were all essential to mission success.

Trindine gave the hatch a gentle push and called up the list of normal parameters on the manual as it sealed behind her.

Not exactly her most or least favorite task aboard the station, it was her turn to log a steady state for the Soyuz emergency exit system. _Make sure it’s ready to go._ Stark white and peppered with the same wires innervating the International Space Station with power, the ready room looked like it did every other Saturday. Too hot for the humans, and pregnant with pods she wouldn't fit in undisguised.

Trindine reseated the headset clamped over the borrowed red bunch of her hair; brought the arm of the microphone back to better see in front of her.

Sudden movement from the left caught her eye, hidden before.

A thick, cuboid case gleamed in the light from the bay windows overlooking the VI solar array. There was an entire repair kit left open, floating by the screen from the last time someone had ventured in for a diagnostic.

She had the sneaking suspicion it was Dr. Loren’s mess, because he was always leaving things around for her to deal with later and had chronic issues with flouting procedure in general. Thankfully, it hadn’t vomited its contents into the air to be angrily collected and returned to their respective places, innocently still but adrift in the air. That had been a measly waste of twenty five minutes that she wouldn't get back.

Shutting the toolbox and letting it float down to list on the floor, Trindine pushed off gently to take a look at the top of the maintenance interface she’d been staring into. Connected to all serviceable pods, it alone administered the complete release command, but it also performed as a brain, checking and routing instructions to them individually - locking or unlocking occupant doors, copiloting precursors to passenger-directed flights. Calculating fuel. That all looked to be in order, so she executed a neat flip off a chrome crawl-support bar when she got close enough to the ceiling, a reminder that in many ways she worked and lived inside the fanciest glorified rollcage military-subsidized programs could buy.

Trindine came back face down. Grabbing the face of the hive computer, she turned until its scrolling readouts indicating each pod’s status were legible. She took a sip of her bitter brew through the one-way lip of the thermos and muttered to herself, cross-comparing data with the manual.

“You’ve been behaving, I see. No logged errors since we saw each other last.”

To be certain of that, she thumbed through the list of prewritten operations beside the digital green, looping logs in the middle of the screen, and selected a program to run.

Trindine released her coffee for long enough to withdraw her handheld tablet’s thin gray stylus. Head bent in scrupulous concentration, she opened a new note to scratch out her report on. “Ran diagnostics…”

But as the subroutine loaded and began totaling data returns, she noticed an odd flashing coming from the comm on her belt. She blindly let go of the stylus. It joined the thermos of coffee in rotating a foot or so from her face.

Unhooking her comm from its magnetic clip, she tried to remember what orange meant.

 _What is…_ Trindine squinted at the blinking notification. A geographic warning. _No. That’s not right, the kosmonavt would be all over it._

She quieted the alarm and flipped open the rudimentary screen to swipe over to her hidden communications tab, a line reserved for use within the Temple. One she’d specifically told everyone to cease cluttering up with gossip and panicky false positives. For her sanity.

_Damn it, Azzanadra, if you’re having a fit again—_

The full message loaded. Her spine chilled, no longer prickling with irritation.

 _Bad contact._ Orange meant bad contact.

The message was curt, to the point. By her reckoning, no one had signed off on the distress signal. _Automated?_ Aside from her, only one other person even _knew_ about the bio-tracker's hidden warning system, and they'd made doubly sure that excluded Sliske.

_Hostile UPM d-closing 250km Colonel S. Subject stable, ETA …_

A symbol turned unto itself, refreshing, but there was no time indicated.

_ETA …_

Whatever she was doing, she was moving too fast for his senses to pick up… or he was distracted.

_ETA …_

The morning meeting was in two hours.

She would have to lock down the entire Soyuz chamber for privacy.

Rubbing a too-soft hand over pupiled eyes, Trindine went through a series of mental calculations as she tried to decide whether it would be worth blowing five years of deep cover to save her superior from his own inattentiveness.

 _No_ , Trindine mused, teeth grit. _Not really._

Instead, she opened up the outbound line on her comm.

_Better pick up this time, sir._

 

* * *

 

Felix had dwelt more than once on how it would be.

To gamble her oral safety without caution. To push inside his dagger-filled mouth and feel no other sensation than the welcoming slide of a tongue pushing back.

Everything tingled, but her lips and nose foremost, caught up in vibrations and trading breath for physical intoxication.

And the high was unbelievably strong. Sliske had professed to her a love of kissing before. Felix hadn't really bought his claim that he found the closeness for its own sake a cherishable reward for time spent. Not because she didn't agree, but because it hadn't rung true to the prowling, unattainable image he projected to the world. With his recently divulged tricks fresh on her mind, she supposed they both had some masks to cast off.

It was a little shocking, and a lot of fun. Until Leela, until getting heinously drunk on the rooftop of Delta Phi Epsilon's off-campus bungalow and loudly bastardizing the lyrics to "Only Girl (In The World)," as the sky turned pink and blue, Felix had only ever considered a kiss as precursor to what came after. A tool as useful as what it portended, a gateway to deeper intimacy. Then several years went by, and casual lovers found her unconditional credence was too rare to share the same deep, needy kisses their revelry had dissolved into, passing air back and forth under stars they couldn't see. There had been no more grabbing best friends by the face, no confessions choked into mouths desperate to verify feelings.

She'd forgotten what it was like when that barrier broke down. When the animal fear wore off and it got _slow._ Becoming placid with trust, vulnerable to being taken off-guard by a sudden nip, heart drumming hard. The way the room could fade into a sensory backdrop no greater than a point of reference that she was still bound to Earth, normally so prominent in regulating her self-orientation. All those peculiar tells fixed in physical memory's realm, elements that reminded kissing could transmit complex messages as fast as she could read them, needs unspoken made known with jolting immediacy.

A light suck on her lower lip preceded the coy shift of hands creeping under her skirt. Their shoulders bowed in opposite directions. It felt like they were in tune.

 _Finally,_ Felix wondered, lost in that magic haze,  _we're alone, and we're touching, and it's good._

"One day," Sliske said far too conversationally, breaking to lick into her again, groan like that again. "I'd like to see if it's possible to come this way."

Without thinking about it, Felix agreed, murmuring and almost certain to be sore-mouthed the next day. "Just lips? Sure, easily, knowing you." She drew back far enough to admire the way he was lit from behind, a dark silhouette of head and shoulders. Her nails found the trim curve of his jaw, tracing pale ridges to where they terminated in pronged half-moons inflexibly smooth. They were hard as bone, without pore or seam. 

He was curled up with her on what Felix would call a sectional, set sideways across his lap from how they'd fallen when he'd dragged her down onto his sofa.

There had been a door, and then a series of walls. Mind a tense flurry and no closer to putting a stop to an excruciating comedy of errors, she'd met his statement of  _shoes off, please_ with  _go ahead,_ to which he'd replied by kneeling to unlace them. That had gone well, if success was measured in embarrassed lust.

 _My, you_ are _worked up. Been a bit, has it?_

Many late night chats informed her understanding of his flat's layout. His bed couldn't have been farther than ten yards away, but it might as well have been on Pluto. It was dim - the only illumination weak, spilling across the floor from a hallway they'd taken turns pushing each other up against before she'd picked a doorway and shoved him through it.

Firm pressure tapped at the dips above her thigh, catching her skirt on the way up and rubbing creases into it on the way down. Felix lifted her leg aside for him, shifting back to settle on a broad knee.  _I think my pants are on the coffee table._ Sliske kissed her temple and purred, seemingly content with her endorsement. 

"It's agreed, then." A thicker point slid through the wet flesh that'd darkened the front of his trousers, his thumb lighting up her nerves. "But I'd hoped for more." 

Felix tipped her head back to quirk an eyebrow at him. "Right. You thought we should fuck with our clothes on, is that it?"

"Opposed?" A couple fingers took a moment to tease at the edges, measuring, and pressed inward. The angle wasn't conducive to anything more forward than the shallow pump of a couple joints. It still managed to drive a gasp out of her. Sliske seemed to agree. "Oh, that is  _evil,_ darling—"

"It's called arousal," Felix quipped. Aching to reenter the throes of reciprocal mindlessness already, she left his face alone to rub through the damp outline in his appallingly orange chinos, mapping the cock that flexed underneath. "It happens sometimes, when you bring people home and throw them around your house."

"I'm familiar." His breath coming in thicker draws, Sliske arched under her touch. "If I don't fuck you I think I'm going to die," he whispered, making a weak noise when his hips canted into her palm and she squeezed back, messy with it. "Whether or not you choose to undress for me is entirely up to you."

Felix was a pretty self-contained entity on most days and didn't consider herself much of a poet, so when her seduction ended up a little rough around the edges, it didn't bother her. "Honestly," she suggested, voice uneven, "I think we ought to blow each other first. Loser calls for takeaway."

Though she'd failed to pay detailed attention to figures beyond what Sliske liked to wink about, in his dimensions, he reminded her of a pop can. Which was at once an unrepeatably bad and fantastic annunciation to intimacy. With something approaching madness, Felix wondered if that was why he had a no kissing and telling policy. _Because he's hung like a snap top. Oh Gods, don't laugh. You can't grope a man and laugh at him._

Sliske's startled grunt bled into a sustained moan, eyes also fixed on the transactions taking place between them. "What of the victor?"

Feeling oddly playful, Felix ground against his wrist. "Why don't you tell me?" 

"Fine, you lovely little slag," he countered, and she did laugh then. "Envision this. I'll bounce you on my lap for a bit."

It kept surprising her that his lips were so plush, full with the stimulating rub of fine crinkles. Completely unlike the austere stone they resembled, the dark bow of them split into a grin against her mouth, muttering quietly. "If _I_ lose, you can expect your takeaway and a  _most thorough_ string of apologetic blowjobs."

Felix decided that deal was eminently fair, but Sliske wasn't finished. The kohl really did flatter his sclera, consuming in their darkness around the burn of neon yellow. "If _you_ lose, perhaps you'd consider a similar concession, but this I'll admit—either appeals to me." Eyeridges rode higher, set at provocative right angles. "I've waited for you to render me dripping since you made landfall."

The hand slowly working her twisted and another finger joined the others. Her mind spun under the renewed stretch and all the various implications in his wording. "Be honest. What have _you_ waited for?" Sliske goaded, searching her for something. "For this?" His grip on her hip shifted her to the left.

Felix took a deep breath to reply in time to be filled to flush with his knuckles. It punched a soft groan out of her. "You may have a laugh at the expense of my reclusive perversions, but wouldn't you like to be the judge of my ability?" He bucked up against her hand's stuttered stroking. "Don't you want to feel good together?"

His mouth was still open slightly when Felix took it again, breathless. "Yeah." That was, in a word, accurate, though horribly smarmy. But what had she become in the last few months if not susceptible to his ingratiating behavior? "I do. Budge up, I need to spread—"

They did some sensual shuffling around. Being able to straddle him provided a couple new advantages. For instance, his flies were so elusive they bordered on the imaginary, but rocking back into the full support of his hand, Felix didn't much care when Sliske knocked hers aside to take over undoing them. She didn't even hear anything, a wet, soundless slap against her thigh the only indication he'd succeeded.

And then his jacket was gone.

Felix flinched at the loss, wide-eyed. The resulting rebound of his fingers sent sparks along her already frayed nerves. "Shit—okay, can we?" He fucked with her on purpose, the nit, smiling when she winced softly around a curl of pleasure. "Talk about that?" 

"Talk about what," Sliske said, kittenish, and proceeded to prove his relation to an oil slick by lifting one-handed the front of his black raglan, pulling it overhead. The impromptu bolero wavered strangely as it framed his lissome torso before the fabric simply vanished. 

" _Whatever that was."_  He only laughed, and Felix grappled with herself, refusing to ruin everything by yelling. "Are you some kind of fucking trickster god? Is this something all Mahjarrat can do, just manipulate matter at will like a comic book character, turning into mid-life crisis's and playing Houdini with their clothes?" She squinted at him, leaning away when he tilted forward to brush their mouths together. " _Are you_ even a Mahjarrat?"

Snorting impolitely, Sliske shook his head at her. "Not all, and yes, I am." His smile had gained a weird edge to it. "Would you be disappointed if I wasn't?"

"No," Felix said, elbows locking around his shoulders. "Against my better judgement, I do actually think more of you than what your packaging looks like."

This time his kiss wouldn't be evaded. Sliske pressed her for more when Felix scaled his thighs to perch over his hips, forcing his chin down as they moved into a deeper recline. He stopped her when their chests met, murmuring, "easy now," in that drugged, arch scrape, showing too much teeth. "I can't get a grip if you're sitting on it." 

Bright hot pressure behind her eyes forced them shut, the soft weave of the jumper Felix had donned against early April's mercurial moods steel wool on her skin. Sliske radiated heat as he brought them off - a little unbalanced, but there was the rest of the night and maybe the next day to reciprocate - moaning like she'd picked him up on a corner because the better part of his hand was thrusting inside of her. Part of Felix wondered if they could keep it up indefinitely. If it was possible to hold his voice in that rough-chop, hoarse cadence forever. 

Underneath it, the intermittent noise of being fingered was carving itself a new home in her psyche. Felix started to tense against every intrusion.

"Hurry up," she seethed, rolling smooth fabric underhand in a vain attempt to stave off deliquescing sensation. "Gonna come without you."

Unconcerned, Sliske drove into her with a little more power. "Oh?" He offered something resembling a growl. "How novel an experience that must be."

Felix let the low, syrupy pool melting the strength in her back stretch each syllable out, every last word a grinding murmur. "It's not all sluts and rainbows for us commoners, King Midas." 

The hand that had previously been occupied with languidly jacking himself coaxed her head down. Sliske hissed in her ear and withdrew the fingers coaxing her to orgasm, trailing them up past nerve endings, painting the low jut of her abdomen with a slick stripe. Eyes flickering open, Felix witnessed him ignore her abandoned quaking and use what remained to grease his cock.

"I've told you what I want," he returned, cajoling, elbow fixed in stiff, halting rotations at its socket. "Now let's hear the same from you."

Felix twitched, cobbling what was left of her rationality into something approaching reason and only a bit upset that she sounded so fragile. "What? Sliske, I want you to—"

"Send us into paroxysms of fantasia, yes, I can  _tell_ , your knees are shaking," he said, clapping a hand to her back. Dizzy, she wondered at his ability not only to drive her up and down the wall but clear through to the other side, trying to move for a better view. Sliske licked his lips and anchored her at the waist. "But is that because of  _me?"_

Felix tightened her grip on the sofa arch behind him, squirming, maddened by the supple skin between her forearms, the helical bone curling to frame his neck. "What do you mean, because of you?" Why was he being so difficult? "Do you think I let  _anybody—"_

 _"I don't."_ She watched the hand working the thick swell of the cap falter. Her gaze flicked to his face, so sick with desire it was impairing her brain function. His stare was disquieting, the effect compounded by her proximity to it. "We're making a significant decision, one not so easily undone. We shouldn't treat it with superficial pomp." Sliske broke into a tentative grin. "You think I'm depraved. You're right, but I'm also not above promises of fidelity."

Felix blinked, and then blinked again.

Despite the lust churning her blood into froth, like finally assigning the intended pagination to a heap of disorganized case files, his meaning became startling plain.

Her body stilled.

The suddenness of unheeded responsibility was paralyzing.

Though she'd been starving for it, counting the hours until she could touch him, Felix had somehow managed to arrive to this discussion completely unprepared.  
  
They were about to have sex without any protection. A quick consultation of memory assured her they hadn't even talked about it. It hadn't registered as an issue to consider, not so much as a blip on her mind's radar.

That Sliske had assumed she'd purposefully chosen not to pass comment was enough to set her face on fire.

Felix had no idea how to put that assumption to rights. He'd never struck her as a family man, and the idea that either of them could contract an illness from an unguarded affair strained what scant knowledge she did possess of interspecies relationships. Concepts like  _threshold of infection_ and _host-specific immunological defense_ flossed the collapsing sinkhole between her ears. 

_I think I earned a 79% in Microbiology. Do—do Mahjarrat have forty-six chromosomes? This is bad. Oh, this is really bad._

He wasn't taking her silent panic well, shifting impatiently. Felix unwound her arms from his neck with awkward motions. Exerting hesitant pressure against the chest circulating dazed air under her chin, she tried to express anything other than the stunned whirl dominating her thoughts. Words came and went, doubling back more than once on how to frame the question.  _Can we use a condom_ seemed totally appropriate, really reasonable, not at all weird, but what if he didn't keep any around? 

With every passing moment Sliske became more incredulous, the casual salaciousness in his smile a ghost of its former shape. "Are you alright?"  
  
_Just ask him_ , Felix berated herself, staring with growing horror as it lapsed into a crestfallen frown, _you artless numbskull, what the fuck—_  
  
"Can I use your shower first?"

Her world tilted on its axis from the force of her regret. _Shit!_  "I mean—not that I don't _—_ "

 _No! Shut up!_  her voice of reason pleaded, hanging at the borders of what she was beginning to think was less a brain and more an assortment of dumb impulses. "Uh, you know. Want. That."

 _You don't!_ The voice rattled the bars of its cage in exiled agony.  _Please, please shut the fuck up!_ "With... you."  
  
Sliske swallowed, mouth parting gently in a way that made Felix want to take it back. Blunder right on through belated questions about birth control and communicable disease. Whether people of two different species could conceive if they actively tried _._ But he beat her to it.  
  
Drawing up into a loose-limbed retreat, Sliske inclined his head and gestured to the hall that lay past a series of overstuffed bookshelves and the piano he'd played a really unsettling cover of Hozier on for her a month ago, when she'd been up for three days without a rest. "Of course."

Untangling was hell. In comparison, his dark gray ranginess took a lot more effort to compel than her stocky brown calves, sock-feet straining to return her height against his carpet.

"Felix," he started. Halting, Sliske made to reach for her when she got up, but the timing was off. His claws whispered across her arm as her skirt swayed into place, and that was all. "It's... the second door to the right."

 _I know._ Felix felt her vision glaze over a bit when she took in the full, debauched sprawl of him staring back at her. All two hundred and forty centimeters of him, flies open -  _if they even exist,_ she thought, a little hysterical - and his prick hard in the loose grip of a striped hand, shirtless. _Still_ staring.

"Thanks," Felix blurted, and almost fell over the coffee table. She fled, locked herself inside his washroom, and tried not to give in to hyperventilation.

The ceiling hid four recessed lights. They struggled through a few false starts before steadying when she slapped the switch on. Every surface was sparkling clean, unused in a way that was usually comical enough to inspire wry existentialism. In the present context it lent the space a character that made her heart clench. Hands planted around the sink, unfocused eyes caught the cheery blue splatter of tempera paint long dried.

It was in the caulking, on the edge of cabinet hinges, and stubborn speckles dotted grooves in the floor. He'd obviously cleaned since then, whatever mess left behind symptomatic of his open disregard for perfection.  
  
"You're so stupid," Felix whispered, staring into the guilty reflection she made. Her hair was nearly unrecognizable in its disorder, lips swollen and garnet purple. Both pupils had shrank into dots, and the whites were venous at the corners, glossy with shame. "You're a coward. You should go back out there and apologize. For being a stupid coward."

That didn't happen, of course.  
  
The glass cubicle of his shower stall boasted a casement window. Living overseas for six years had fostered a faint discomfort with entering anything smaller than she was tall, European baths infamously lightless and cramped, but inside, there were pastel tiles lit by the soft glow from the streetlamps, a loofah, and no less than eight bottles of shampoo. All expended to different levels of use, stocked two by three by three on a wire pyramid.  
  
A little tearful but mostly horrified by herself for bothering to think she'd been ready to navigate a relationship again, Felix shimmied out of her remaining clothes, got in, and set the lever as far to the left as it would turn.  
  
_What to do_ , she thought. Gasping and shuddering, she released several uncharitable curses as the wintery spray sterilized her flesh of lingering sensation. _Oh, gods, I don't know. At least I've given myself some time to think about this._

 

* * *

 

He didn't hear exactly what she was saying to herself, but Sliske could catch enough of her inflection to understand that Felix was very upset. 

Behind the door water began flowing in a sharp trill. Pipes responded to the abrupt change in their internal temperature with a song quiet and tinny.

Somehow, he’d managed to put a little fear in her. Felix was likely reevaluating all of their interactions at that very moment; puzzling out what tells she’d missed, any slips signifying how Sliske had dove in too deep with his desires. When he made the choice to cross that invisible line. A prideful obsession and a very stubborn facet of himself he couldn’t seem to shake. A repeating motif in the tapestry.

Now he’d gone and made her aware of it.

That somewhere beneath his complex web of cocksure bastard and breezy complement was a terrible man that needed for people to _approve of him._

Which meant the rules of engagement had changed again.

Pressing the heel of his palm into his groin, Sliske stared inconsolable and bitter at a spot on the ceiling.

Young, but not tractable. Eager to demonstrate competency, but not demanding attention so much as commanding it. Defensive, mean, bordering on cruel, but also in ways deeply compassionate. If she were Mahjarrat, Sliske would’ve been terribly worried she was out for his livelihood. But Felix was very much a human being, tragically, mortal all the way from her mindset to the literal cellular components that ensured it. Not at all wise to utilizing her innate magnetisms for personal gain. The way her sloe-eyed charms, dryly clever insults, and ability to adapt to extreme social climes drew in people like him.

Him and his old demons. _The better for me_ , he would have once thought covetously, _to enchant with a version of myself that isn’t real._ Someone who wouldn’t know better the ways one can be swindled slow and heartless out of their own agency.

That accusation burned him, reflecting after the fact. It was well-earned, but not fitting for his current modus operandi. At least a long century past were the days of trysting among worshippers after the evening mass like a convenient brothel. And then much later, they had all seen how sailing into copy to harass and philander the editor before returning to render future HR meetings in graphics had gone. All but the editor himself, apparently.

Sliske still wondered about that.

An at the time unrequited love for a deity hadn't proven itself a strong enough foundation on which to build a well-balanced and communicative relationship. Frankly put, it had also been a rather poor way to go about serving said deity.

So maybe he’d leaned a little hard into searching out in other people the polar opposite of Azzanadra. But that didn’t make Felix a replacement; it made her addictive and convenient.

In his rational mind, he knew the ideal time to be marathoning orgasm after orgasm had long passed. Newfound knowledge was seared into his consciousness, and his hands wouldn't forget, transgression or faux pas aside. Not to mention how the pulsing ache in his spine had other things to say than a disparaging reel of _bodged it really good, wanker._

It told Sliske to follow her in there.

 _Before_ all the mood died.

It told him to push her up against the showertiles, dropping kisses wherever they fell. Fortunate as he’d been in his perusal of her many disarmed states thus far, the sight of her soaked and streaming with water was still a mystery to him, and he intended to fully appreciate it some day. Desperate messages itching under his skin told him to rest his chin against the top of her head and invite her arms to rest around his shoulders, pull her leg over his hip, and rut through the gap of her slickened thighs until he came. To tongue deeply the sultry and illicit mess left behind afterward.

Until they couldn’t wait anymore. Until Felix begged for him the same way he’d done so many times, immodest and vocal, or at least gave any kind of indication at all that she needed him, and then Sliske would help lower her onto his cock and they’d have at it until it was light outside. Or perhaps he’d continue to lick into her, see which of them could come first. Felix astride his mouth, helpless or commanding but in either role prodigiously noisy, and Sliske fisting himself where he knelt, welling up over the hand not pinning her to the wall.

Physically speaking, he could keep on until they were beyond satisfied. He could go for hours if he just slammed a glass or two of water _right bloody then_ and—

Felix yelped in the washroom, a sharp note of pained surprise, returning his attention to reality.

He blinked and exhaled hard as she proceeded to swear heartily, muttering something. It appeared despite his frequent regaling she’d underestimated the volatility of the building’s central heater. The management had to coddle that boiler to death every winter, but come springtime it went to work like it owed rent.

A part of him was disappointed she hadn’t opted for cold.

That would have been a little vindicating.

His ears strained to catch further gasps or maybe moans of self-love, something for him to fantasize to, but nothing like that sounded from beneath the steadily drumming splashes of the showerhead hitting her body and the floor. Felix was actually using his shower to wash up.

 _Really_ , and _how dare she_ , Sliske thought, staying put but twitching from the effort.

He eventually settled for checking his messages, flicking through news and notifications as he waited for his body to relax into a state less aggressively ready to go.

About five minutes or so later his phone started vibrating in short sequences. The bar that flashed up over a bit of inbox hate he’d been busy deriving dark enjoyment from earning proclaimed private caller. Because his number was available to a wide swath of people for whom listing theirs under anonymity was vital, Sliske answered it without hesitation.

"Sliske, at your service," he rattled off, possessing all the vim and vigor of the dead. "To what do I owe the displeasure of this—" pulling the phone away, he squinted at the corner time stamp and rolled his eyes, replacing it against his ear, "witching hour disturbance?"

There was a strange pause in between his bland, altogether restrained serialization and the caller's reply, almost as if delayed.

Finally, there was rustling, and then. "Colonel," came a familiar, bone dry rasp, "are you _drunk?"_

Effusive delight and puritanical rage warred for prominence. The rage won. Mostly. "I'm at home _, darling._ How has the _impending threat_ presented by the _vacuum of space_ been treating you? Healthy? Happy?"

"I'm well enough." Trindine seemed puzzled by the strength behind his outburst. Unfortunately, that wasn't a strong indication in any direction about what she'd called after. "You sound tense, sir. Are you perhaps defusing after a gruesome string of violent murders? Lose any firefights with Amazon's cloud ninjas lately?"

"I'm having a bad night, yes," Sliske snipped, through with it. "The fates have seen fit to spoil me with loss and heartache. I am rife with inner conflict and may never see the light of true happiness again—"

She cut him off abruptly, tone flat but screaming of _I don't want to know._ "Cheers." Which was what he'd been going for. Deep as his love ran for one of the highest achieving among their ranks, he was not in the mood, and rather looked forward to resuming his pity party. "But it's about to get worse." Before Sliske had the chance to have a well-deserved grumble over duty and under-observing chain of command, Trindine continued. "How many times have I told you to get that deadeye checked out?"

Sliske stilled. Ran her words through the mental gauntlet a second time. Hand rising to protect his speech despite the loud, pounding rush already dulling any noise that could've reached Felix in the shower, he restored the illusion of his trousers to a state fit for public consumption. "How long do I have, Major?"

 

* * *

 

 _"Owww._ Jeez. What...?"

Hissing, Felix cupped her neck, investigating the sharp sting that resulted from the gentle pressure. A thin streak of blood diluted from brilliant red to pale brown under the cold rivulets running down her hand. Numb and confused, she looked from the broken bottles oozing hair product all over the tile floor to the window, which had a neat hole punched through it Felix was certain hadn't been there before.

Her mind struggled to make the crucial connection between what she was seeing and feeling, and then another bullet slammed into the glass, a couple centimeters to the left of the first. Two more shampoo bottles exploded.

Felix stumbled back and nearly lost her footing. She wasn't caught up enough to cry out in fear - it was the shock of a third shot socking into the wall where she'd been standing moments prior that pulled the noise from her.

Felix wrenched open the shower door without turning the lever off. Scooping up what she could reach to clothe herself before she was murdered wet and nude, she spilled into the hall.

 

* * *

 

Sliske had already vaulted the sofa. Trindine paid no heed to his alarm, unaware of the breach.

"I'm looking at what I have, and, I don't know. Half an hour? Maybe more, depending on whether you've been good and cautious like I told you. Check the wards. If memory serves, Enakhra will be limited to the perimeter enforced by the Arce Regum—"  

The way he saw it, he had two options. He could kick Felix out, pretend to be complicit in a progressing crime or _something_ , and put on a big scene that would have her running safely for the hills. It would be unlikely she'd ever talk to him again, but that was a trivial price to pay for a life.

 _A couple months down the drain_.

He exhaled the disbelief in his throat. To think such was ridiculous. What were a couple months to him? No, he wasn't one to struggle to relinquish lost pride around the sunk cost of time or effort. Sliske didn't want to lose her friendship any more than he wanted to cut his own fingers off. Up until the last hour or so, they'd had a merry little gambol going.

But the second choice... basically amounted to kidnapping. Logistics tumbled around in his head. Side effects weren't very well-documented, but he had the play of the field, and no one had ever died in his care. Most of the remaining safehouses that hadn't been converted in the rebellion were very far away - Zamorak's thorough control over Western Europe. If he were to sustain any significant damage, Sliske could end up incapable of sending her on.

Shattering glass echoed under a short, startled scream.

It was too late for the former. Felix deserved better than to be abducted and stuck with him down a hole in the ground, but there wasn't a choice anymore.

Sliske was a thief. He'd stolen from private collectors, museums, governments, and some of the most powerfully vested corporate entities in the world. He'd never pinched a _person_ , but it couldn't be that much different from a half-million pound painting, or the formula for an antidote to a biochemical weapon.

Before he could get farther than the threshold of the hall Felix was already halfway down it.

" _We are fucking under attack,_ " she said, hopping into her skirt and gasping around an understandable panic. "I thought your fuses— _Guthix_ , you have _so much_ shampoo _—_ " 

Trindine reminded him of her continued presence on the line as he dragged Felix into his bedroom and cracked the door, tearing open the closet for his run kit in the crawl space. "Is there someone  _there with you?"_

The place was a mess. Various props for a doctor's office roleplay he'd been in the process of shooting littered the floor. He assumed Felix allowed her manhandling out of fear, face flush from bathing and the fluffy jumper he'd been so looking forward to decorating the floor with caught up around her hips, clinging to untoweled moisture. She kicked aside a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and started wiggling into her socks.

"Afraid so," Sliske reported, yanking on the draw cord and catching the kit one-handed. Snatching the external hard drive off his desk, he bagged it and slung the burden over his back.

Felix had a cut on her jaw, ringed red, and she looked to be about ready to launch into a set of questions there was no time to answer. "There's glass everywhere, the window—but it was a _gun_ , Sliske _—_ "

A concerning thump issued from some floors above. Neither of them would have heard it and Felix certainly wouldn't have reacted to it had he not sworn irritably. Not enough time at all.

"Tell me," Sliske said, attempting to hang on to some of the inviolable respect he'd garnered over the course of their nascent friendship by forcing her to his chest as gently as possible. "What's the weather like in Canberra?"

The thump became the slam of a door down from his flat. Enakhra was on the same floor, then, and the primal itch of her presence nagged at his mind suddenly, the burn of another. He hadn't noticed it before. He wondered how long she'd been near.

" _Hello?"_ Felix demanded, struggling fruitlessly. "I don't know if you've noticed, but someone is _shooting up your house,_ man!"

"Dry," Trindine hissed. "But operational, _if you're lucky._ Precious few of service are in communication to provide aid. Lakosta was responsible for maintaining connections to the power grid. She died in the Black Sea raid. There may not even be light _—_ "

"Good enough. I'll be in touch." Sliske ignored Trindine's shout not to disconnect and crushed his phone until the speaker sizzled, shrieking in a gross parody of the jingle that played when it powered down, and flung the ruined hunk of plastic away.

Yes, Sliske was a thief. 

This was what thieves did best.

Put their hands on what they knew wasn't theirs to have, and take it. 

"Hey, I know I'm not your favorite person right now, but can I say that I have _no idea what's happening?"_

Sliske looked down at Felix's upturned face and wished for a miracle. "Hold on."

She scowled and hissed at him, " _to what,_ exactly?" but before he could deliver his standard comment, which was crude though not technically wrong, the temperature of the air around them dropped by several degrees.

He let himself enjoy a brief flash of warmth at the startled wonder in her expression as Felix witnessed for the first time his most treasured natural phenomenon.

Hair so wet beads of water were still escaping lifted and took with it the droplets it had yet to spend, shimmering in the dark. The strings on her jumper followed shortly after. These were the sole visual warning Felix had that anything amiss was happening before a blinding smokescreen shot up all around them; Newtonian law's shoddy anchor on reality found contestable by the deep, umbral flow of shadow.

Then her eyes squeezed shut, bleeding into a tortured look that well-described the pinching sensation of translocating via another.

He saw it steal over her, and then he didn't, navigating vast distances at the velocity of darkness. Somewhere in the stream between Reading and a place far less likely to be perforated or percussed within the next minute beyond what was suitable for habitation, unnamed forces took hold, and they were spirited into a continuum.

In the back of his mind, Sliske thought about what to tell his brother.

 

* * *

 

_-3102-4-_

The lead panned out in ways I've only fantasized of. She brought us right to him.

I cannot figure into language how close we are to finally ending this disgusting madness.

Enakhra has recovered several items of interest from Sliske's latest dwelling. It's the first we've tracked down to possess any sign of being occupied, which has elevated the trail, in my opinion, from ice cold to the sheen of steam that rises from boiling plasma. She says his home was poorly kept, like a cave. I believe her.

Of particular interest are a couple mobiles, one badly broken. Have a guess who it belonged to. If Daquarius can repair it to a state sufficient to pull files from, I'm almost certain there will be information worth cracking open the ten year old cava waiting in Bilrach's departmental storage closet. If we're lucky, perhaps even worth ravishing him in it afterward.

Hmm. Siri, make an appointment for tomorrow. 'Ravish Bilrach.' Yes, that has a nice ring to it. 

What I wasn't anticipating was the incidence of Wahisietel's cohabitation. His involvement in this wasn't something I desired. We'll attempt to gather intelligence on the Temple from his possessions anyway. I doubt he would leave anything exciting unguarded, but you never know.

The rest I've ordered Enakhra to dispose of as she pleases.

I hope she burns the entire building to the ground. 

 


End file.
